An Urban Farm–Anchored Produce Prescription Program’s Impacts On Weight Reduction

In 2016, the Chicago Botanic Garden and Lawndale Christian Health Center collaborated to develop the Farm on Ogden, a 20,000-square-foot agriculture facility in a historically disinvested food desert in Chicago, Illinois. The partnership's VeggieRx produce prescription program refers patients to the Farm on Ogden for free produce boxes, nutrition counseling, and cooking classes. We first describe this unique cross-sector collaboration and then report on our evaluation of the VeggieRx program for the period January 2016-December 2021, using a retrospective propensity score-weighted cohort design. The overall sample included 680 VeggieRx participants and 978 weighted controls. At eighteen months, the VeggieRx group experienced a mean body weight difference of -6.71 pounds and percentage body weight difference of -4.7 percent relative to control. Our results suggest that Food Is Medicine interventions that anchor produce prescriptions to place-based strategies can improve health outcomes while investing in local communities.