Joselyn Slobodow
Addressing Nutritional Deficiencies at the South Main Clinic through Collaboration with Better Being Co.
Author: Joselyn Slobodow, MS1Title: Addressing Nutritional
Deficiencies at the South Main Clinic through Collaboration with Better Being Co.Background/Objective:
The South Main Clinic provides health care services to the local community, primarily to underserved Spanish-speaking families. These patients demonstrate an increased prevalence of food insecurity and chronic disease. To address such food insecurities, the clinic has worked with local food banks to provide donations directly to patients during their clinical visits when requested. However, it is important to note that such donations primarily consist of dried grains and canned foods, lacking fresh produce and the vital nutrition that comes with it.Methods:
A literature review was conducted to identify the main nutritional deficiencies observed within the underserved Hispanic population.Results:
The literature demonstrates that food insecurity is associated with higher rates of anemia and micronutrient deficiencies including vitamin A and iron (Lopes et al., 2023). Additionally, Hispanic populations demonstrate increased rates of vitamin D deficiency, and iron deficiency specifically in toddlers (Brotanek & Weitzman, 2007, Forrest & Stuhldreher, 2011). Further, Hispanic pregnant women have demonstrated lower rates of prenatal supplementation and knowledge of the importance of prenatal vitamins for fetal development (Flores et al., 2017, Vafai et al., 2020). With such knowledge, the South Main Clinic community health worker and medical student then communicated such needs directly with the Better Being outreach team to ensure donations would be tailored to the specific needs of the community. Particular requests included vitamin D, iron, prenatal vitamins, and children’s multivitamins.Conclusions:
Better Being offers over 1000 products, so it was important to be intentional with what products were requested for donation. The literature review conducted prior to the donation request, allowed for an informed decision to be made to best serve the needs of the community. Such a procedure highlighted the importance of tailoring community efforts to best address needs to prevent waste and improve overall outcomes. Following this donation, we plan to evaluate what products are most utilized by the clinic and community to continue tailoring donation requests in the future.
