The Belfast Soup Kitchen is planning to open a community health hub in June to help improve local access to health care.
“It’s not just about food, it’s about all of the other things that tie in with it,” said Cherie Merrill , the soup kitchen’s executive director.
The move mirrors national trends of anti-hunger organizations expanding their work to address poverty and health disparities by broadening their offerings to include transportation, housing, job training, and social interaction.
While plans for the Belfast health hub are still coming together, it will likely offer a range of services including blood pressure and glucose testing, public health nursing, help with managing medications, referrals, and periodic visits from a maternal mobile health clinic. Merrrill is also in talks with the Penobscot Community Health Center and MaineHealth to offer expanded health care services.
“It’s all to break down barriers and make access easier, especially in a time when healthcare is really expensive and not everyone can afford it,” Merrill said.
The hub will also help the organization expand its “food is medicine” programming that integrates food and nutrition into healthcare in order to treat chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
The soup kitchen on Wednesday opened a larger food pantry, called the Kindness Community Market, and also runs mini-food pantries at several MaineHealth offices. At the community health hub, which will occupy the adjacent former food pantry space, Merrill hopes that people will be able to get “produce prescriptions” from healthcare providers and then fill them at the food pantry.
Debby Heath, a paramedic for the city of Belfast, will hold regular hours at the hub where she’ll offer health monitoring, medication checks and wound care and help connect people to resources – whether it’s hearing aids for seniors, substance abuse treatment, nutrition education, or finding a primary care doctor.
“It’s basically trying to keep them healthy and safe. The streets are difficult and some of them are living in real hard situations,” Heath said.
As a community paramedic, Heath often sees patients in their homes or at different places in town. She says having a consistent presence at the soup kitchen will make it easier to meet people where they’re at and manage chronic conditions.
Last year, the Belfast Soup Kitchen served more than one in five Waldo County residents through its various anti-hunger programs, which include meal delivery, produce distributions and a backpack program that sends food home with school children, Merrill said.
Heath said she cares for many people who have to choose between food and medicine.
“To have enough good healthy food plays such a huge role in whether they live longer or not and whether their disease progresses faster or not,” she said.
