CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Vandalia Health Network is continuing to reach people across the Mountain State with their FARMacy program.
On Monday, Vandalia Health kicked off their newest FARMacy program at the CAMC Primary Care in Charleston, as they’ll expand the program that has served nearly 1,000 patients across four years.
In the past, the FARMacy program has aimed to help those with diabetes in rural areas of the state known as “food deserts,” where healthy food can be hard to grow or find at an affordable price.
With the FARMacy program, patients with diabetes will meet with CAMC professionals once a week for 15 weeks where they will receive lab work, health education classes, and cooking classes.
Katie Lanham, the director of practice transformation and community engagement at Vandalia Health Network, says on top of all of that, patients will get fresh food to help them put the lessons to use.
“We will track and educate on specific chronic disease such as diabetes,” Lanham said. “They will receive fresh fruits and vegetables each week to help them in this effort into maintaining a healthy lifestyle.”
Lanham says last year’s FARMacy program had tangible success across the patients.
“Last year’s results were just astronomical,” Lanham said. “We saw a decrease in A1C of 8.6% over our cohort of about 100 patients.”
Vandalia Health Networks also reported a 3.4% reduction of body mass index and improvement to blood pressure numbers among their patients last year.
Lanham says this program lays the groundwork for how their patients need to treat their bodies moving forward.
“These 15 weeks really gives us an opportunity to set the stage for a healthy lifestyle a healthy lifestyle for our patients,” Lanham said.
Vandalia Health Network has FARMacy programs operating at clinics and hospitals in Kanawha, Monongalia, Preston, and Randolph counties.