Photo Credit: County of Santa Clara

The South Bay Food Justice Collaborative partnered with the Lead Nutritionist at the Santa Clara County Public Health Department to organize a learning visit to St. Louise Regional Hospital. There, they sampled the hospital’s sustainably sourced, delicious meal and observed their adoption of the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) and the universal basic meal approach in action.

The county team recognized SCU faculty and students’ research support for this process, including a past senior capstone project with the Santa Clara University Environmental Studies and Sciences Department and the Environmental Justice and Common Good Initiative.  St. Louise’s affordable sustainability steps include incorporating more fruits and fresh vegetables, cooking from scratch, and providing more culturally relevant dishes (such as recipes from the Filipino, Latiné, and Black communities). The main limitation to keep programs like this in place is funding cuts from the Federal government. This event was hosted by Jocelyn Dubin, Lead Public Health Nutritionist for the County of Santa Clara and point of contact for the GFPP work, and Gloria Dela Merced, RN, MSN, hospital executive, along with the hospital cafeteria team, including the manager, chef, and others.  Special thanks to Lucy O’Diekmann for her role in helping to organize this. Additional participants included farmers, sustainable sourcing enterprises, County agriculture, public health, and sustainability professionals, as well as non-profit agency staff, among others.