Regional supermarket chain Giant Foods has partnered with About Fresh to offer prepaid cards. This is in support of the Fresh Connect program at their stores in the District of Columbia. The program will allow consumers to use the prepaid card as a health benefit. Therefore, they can purchase nutritious food based on prescriptions from medical professionals. Catherine Douglas Moran reports on the program details in Grocery Dive:
“In conjunction with the Giant Food partnership, About Fresh also said in its Tuesday announcement that it’s now working with DC Greens, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that is focused on advancing health equity through food.
About Fresh noted that DC Greens has been responsible for administering the city’s produce prescription program, which allows medical professionals to prescribe fresh fruits and vegetables to patients with diet-related chronic illnesses. The launch of Fresh Connect at Giant Food ties into the DC Greens’ oversight of that prescription program.”
The multi-stage partnership is between grocer, technology providers, healthcare providers, and non-profit programs. Furthermore, it highlights the additional resource that prepaid payments can tie together. This additional resource can ensure that people suffering from food insecurity can get direct access to purchase. This especially includes people with other health care needs
Government Acceptance
As these programs develop with continued buy in from each stage, the link to watch will be government acceptance. If the federal government begins to consider food prescriptions as qualifying health care expenses programs—similar to the Giant’s partnership with About Fresh—it would either expand or be merged with key Health Savings Account and Flexible Spending Account programs. These are programs that already have large use of prepaid cards and wide acceptance. Moran’s previous reporting highlights the industry’s commitment, led by Kroger, to working with government entities to tackle food insecurity and the trend of food as medicine:
“Kroger is helping to stand up a national Food is Medicine Research Initiative with the Rockefeller Foundation and American Heart Association (AHA), the White House announced Wednesday. The company is part of a $250 million commitment tied to the initiative, which is set to launch in spring 2023 with the aim of creating tools and evidence to scale ‘food is medicine’ programs.”
Prepaid Card Infrastructure
While prepaid cards are not the focus of the research, the processes are already in place for prepaid card suppliers, program managers, and retailers. The processes would allow them to capitalize on the existing infrastructure. It would support the end goal of helping Americans use healthy and fresh food options as a medical treatment. Furthermore, inflationary pressures are adding to food costs. Americans can tackle food insecurity problems outside of traditional government aid programs such as SNAP and WIC using these steps. Offering the ability to pay for fruits and vegetables as a health care expense encourages behaviors recommended by doctors. Pairing that with incented card programs allows for a systematically improved infrastructure to follow both medical and potential regulatory guidelines.
Overview by Jordan Hirschfield, Director of the Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.
