With a family of five.

I struggle.

You know, there's times where before this program I couldn't afford a meal for myself, which was fine for me.

Or so I thought.

But my sugar would skyrocket and without eating.

People don't realize.

They think, Oh, I'm overweight, I can spare meal, you know, which you think that.

But as a diabetic, you cannot.

You know, your liver enzymes shoot up and your body releases glucose and you know your sugar will go up.

Fresh food pharmacy is really designed for individuals who have uncontrolled type two diabetes.

They also have identified that they are food insecure, which means they struggle to provide food for themselves and for their family.

And so once an individual identifies that they meet those two criteria, they can be referred to the program and they engage with our clinical staff.

We have a registered dietitian.

The list is premade.

We're going to start over here.

So this is our milk and our eggs.

So I have a family of five, so we shop for two weeks, so we get one per person.

And since I'm a family of five, I get two cartons of eggs, four strawberries.

When I get to.

I am a diabetes educator.

I'm actually a registered dietitian as well as a registered nurse, and I'm a certified diabetes education specialist.

So I work with all our patients here, along with our our and health manager to just help our patients get the best control they can over their diabetes.

I focus on lifestyle changes such as diet and physical activity.

Diabetes has a lot of co-morbidities, so it increases risk of heart disease, kidney disease, just to name a few by us offering healthy food items, it helps to prevent complications from those other co-morbidities.

When I came here, my A-1 C was nine diabetics.

We like to keep our blood sugar six and lower.

So for this program you need to be your A1.

C has seven and above.

So I signed up for this program through my doctor and I got my A1 c down to a six.

I also lost £100.

Being on this program, I was almost £400 and now I'm down to 200 often.

It's not just food insecurity for the individuals who come into the program.

They have transportation challenges, they have challenges with utilities, they have challenges with isolation and other social needs that are identified as part of working with the individual.

So we want to ensure that they're taking advantage of the snap benefits that they have available and utilizing some of those other resources.

One common theme I hear from a lot of my patients is, you know, some of the federally funded programs like SNAP, a lot of my patients are noticing a decrease in that funding.

So it's making it harder for them to source healthy foods.

We provide them with enough food to feed themselves.

And as many people in their household, we give them fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins such as turkey, ground chicken, pork loin fish, as well as whole grains.

The nice thing about this program is not only does it look at treating diabetes and the importance of treating diabetes, but also it looks at the role that food has in that, particularly for our patients who are food insecure and not able to secure healthy, nutritious options.

You give kids a couple bucks, you know, go get a snack.

What are they going to choose?

Are they going to choose the apples and the green peppers and the bananas?

Are they going to choose a check?

Of course they're going to choose a potato.

Chips because of field trips are cheaper, they're tastier and they're more affordable.

Anybody can do it.

You know, if you just focus on eating the right foods and watching your blood sugar, good things can happen.

Hey, listen, I can get over it.

I diabetes, I can be strong.

I can fight this.