The Cooper Urban Health Institute office at the Salvation Army Kroc Center, thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation (BMS-F), has become a food distribution center on Tuesday mornings.
The Cooper Urban Health Institute staff designed the food distribution initiative through partnership with the Ravitz Family Price Rite and with the Camden County Department of Health and Human Services. The Cooper Urban Health Institute identified patients from its primary care offices on Cooper’s main campus and the Salvation Army Kroc Center practice who were most in need.
“Fifty patients received an initial food delivery on May 26, 2020, and another 50 received a delivery the following Tuesday,” explained John McClay, Program Manager of the Cooper Urban Health Institute. “These 100 patients will receive additional groceries on alternating weeks for six weeks, which is a total of three deliveries per patient.”
Cooper’s Urban Health Institute is also a grantee on an initiative with BMS-F to decrease social determinants of health in a high risk population with cardiovascular disease. Food insecurity was identified as a need for the medically and socially complex population served by Cooper during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Caring for these patients is a multi-pronged problem, and through the crisis we have seen individuals and organizations step up to help the community,” said Steven Kaufman, MD, Medical Director of the Cooper Urban Health Institute.
The generous support from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation enabled the Cooper Urban Health Institute to find and deliver groceries to individuals in need with the assistance of volunteers from the Camden County Department of Health and Human Services.
“The unconditional assistance to those in the greatest need during the pandemic is a remarkable testament to the resilience of our community,” said Dr. Kaufman.
The three-year grant also supports additional Cooper Urban Health Institute interventions to assist this vulnerable population, including shared medical appointments around nutrition and smoking cessation, enhanced LPN hypertension protocol visits, and partnering with a Cooper cardiology ambulatory practice to provide a health coach to assist patients with their most pressing needs.
Photos of the team members from the Urban Health Institute as they prepare to distribute groceries to individuals in need with the assistance of volunteers from the Camden County Department of Health and Human Services:
