Soup for Hope: Honoring Chef Odette

09/19/2026

🍎🏥🥕 WHO’S ACTUALLY MAKING “FOOD IS MEDICINE” WORK — AND WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED? 👀💬

I’m currently building out a healthcare-system pilot centered around food, nutrition, and the patient/caregiver experience, and I’m in the learning stage where the real-world details matter just as much as the research.

I understand that no policy or program can be one-size-fits-all across every healthcare system or community. What I’m trying to uncover are the common threads behind what succeeds, what fails, and why.

I’m especially interested in what is happening right now in Pennsylvania and surrounding areas — within hospitals, schools, community organizations, food-access programs, nutrition initiatives, and other programs that may fall under the larger umbrella of Food Is Medicine.

And I really do want the personal opinions here.

📍 What worked in practice?
📍 What sounded good on paper but didn’t translate well?
📍 Where did implementation get stuck?
📍 What made patients, caregivers or communities actually participate?
📍 What would you do differently if you were starting again?

Because ultimately, the living proof is what tells us what can actually be implemented in real life.

If you work in healthcare, nutrition, food access, schools, community health, patient experience, caregiving, or program implementation — I would love to learn from you.

Please #️⃣ tag someone I should know, share this with someone doing this work, or message me directly.

💡 My biggest question:
What did you learn from actually implementing the program that a research paper or program description would never tell us?

09/19/2026

The pilot Project: Is Food 🥘 is medicine already implemented in your facility?? I have questions for you!🙌 ??? 🤙📞

Where what how when? Let’s talk! (I will travel to the locations - Hospital’s/ Schools/Farms to see these operations.

At Soup for Hope, we are working to better understand what it takes to build a meaningful healthcare-system pilot around food, nutrition, patient support and caregiver support.

Before a pilot can move forward, I want to learn as much as possible from the people who are already doing this work.

This space is often called Food Is Medicine, but it can take many forms—medically tailored meals, nutrition support, produce prescriptions, food-access programs, lifestyle medicine, caregiver nourishment, post-treatment nutrition and other community-based health initiatives.

I also understand that no program can be one-size-fits-all.

Every hospital, health system and community operates differently.

What I’m trying to uncover are the common threads behind successful implementation:

What actually works in real life?

What creates barriers?

Who needs to be involved from the beginning?

Who owns the program once it is implemented?

How do hospitals work successfully with community organizations, food providers and other partners?

What creates too much burden for clinical or operational staff?

What do patients and caregivers actually use and value?

How is success measured?

And what have people learned from programs that did not work as originally planned?

For me, this is not just about studying a model on paper.

It is about understanding the lived experience of implementation so we can help build something that is realistic, sustainable and genuinely useful to the people receiving care.

I am especially interested in learning from Pennsylvania and surrounding communities, but I welcome insight from anyone who has experience with this work.

If you are a healthcare professional, dietitian, food-service leader, patient, caregiver, researcher, nonprofit leader, community partner, hospital administrator or someone who has helped operate one of these programs, I would love to hear from you.

And if you know someone doing meaningful work in this space, please #️⃣ tag them or share this post with them.

What did you learn from actually implementing the program that a research paper or program description would never tell us?

That is the knowledge I am looking for right now.
Privately DM me if you can be of support in this path and start to this project.

08/22/2026

Come see us!! Gabby and I will be manifesting later!!

08/13/2026

WHO KNEW?™ What happens when food access, Indigenous foodways, local agriculture, nutrition, and entrepreneurship begin to connect? 🌿🍄🥕

Through Soup for Hope’s Patient Caregiver Community Food Initiative, we’re exploring future collaboration around Native-grown produce, fungi-forward foods, healthy food access, and community opportunity right here in Pittsburgh.

Right now, it’s about listening, planning, building relationships, and connecting the dots. 🧩

What becomes possible when growers, communities, healthcare organizations, and food entrepreneurs design solutions together?

Let’s get this implemented. 💚



Because food is medicine 💊

GROWING JUSTICE is a pooled fund co-designed by funders, farmers, advocates, food suppliers, purchasers and community partners from Native and non-Native communities across the country to transform food systems through EQUITABLE GOOD FOOD PROCUREMENT.

08/09/2026

**Big moment for Soup for Hope. 💛**

This month, WHO KNEW?™ received two meaningful endorsements from **Ronald J. Buckanovich, MD, PhD, Endowed Chair in Immunotherapy at Magee-Womens Research Institute and UPMC/University of Pittsburgh**, and **Michael Annichine, President & CEO of Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation**.

Their support means a great deal because both are deeply connected to advancing women’s health, research, and the future of patient care.

WHO KNEW?™ was built around a simple idea: groundbreaking research should feel understandable, relevant, and connected to the people it may one day help.

We’re grateful, encouraged, and excited to keep building.

**Research → Understanding → Connection → Community Impact**

This is just the beginning. ✨

08/08/2026

What happens when important health information never makes it beyond the walls of a hospital or research institution?

That question is at the heart of the work we’re building at Soup for Hope and WHO KNEW?™.

We are creating a bridge between research, healthcare, and community — translating complex health and research information into conversations people can understand, trust, and use in their everyday lives.

And that bridge is already taking shape.

Through community events, cancer survivorship programs, food-access initiatives, health conversations, and patient support, we’ve created 900+ community touchpoints with patients, survivors, caregivers, families, and residents.

We’ve shared 200+ comfort items, brought ovarian cancer and women’s health information directly into community spaces, and built relationships across healthcare, cancer research, food access, and community organizations.

But the numbers are only part of the story.

The larger goal is translation.

Helping someone understand what research could mean for their life.

Helping a caregiver know what questions to ask.

Helping a family connect with resources.

Helping researchers and healthcare organizations bring important knowledge beyond their institutions and into neighborhoods, events, waiting rooms, and homes.

Because scientific discovery can change what is possible — but people have to be able to understand it, trust it, and act on it.

That’s the bridge we’re building.

Research → Understanding → Trust → Community Action

The need may change.

The framework stays the same.

Soup for Hope | WHO KNEW?™ Research Translation Initiative

08/05/2026