Tools and resources

Local and sustainable food tracking tool

• Food
• Local Food
• Food Tool

This tool is designed to support hospitals in tracking sustainable food purchasing and local food purchasing and aligns with the data tracking needs at Practice Greenhealth.  

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The Healthy Beverage Tracking Tool

• Food
• Food Tool
• Food and Beverage Purchasing

This tool supports food service facilities in tracking their purchasing of healthy beverages, as part of their Healthy Beverage Programs.

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Palomar Health: Sustainable, local, and organic food purchasing

• Food and Beverage Purchasing
• Food Case Study
• Food
• Case Study
• Food Service

With its position in the community, 4,400 employees, and over 2 million meals prepared per year, Palomar Health has a significant opportunity to make a positive impact on human health and the environment by serving more sustainable, local, and organic produce. This case study highlights this California health system's efforts to leverage the supply chain, collaborate with other hospitals, educate…

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Seattle Children’s Garden Seattle Children's (2016)

• Green Building
• Seattle Children's Hospital
• Exemplary Document
• Food
• Report

Seattle Children’s Hospital has promoted onsite food producing vegetable gardens for a couple of reasons. The first is to connect patients and families to healthy foods and let children experience harvesting, cooking and eating local organic produce. The second is to test the capacity for supplying produce to kitchen operations.   In the teaching garden, nutritionists hold classes on growing…

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10 ways to drink water model flyers and poster

• Food
• Exemplary Document
• Amery Hospital
• Poster

A better option for hydration and quenching thirst than sugar-sweetened beverages is water, and in the United States, tap water has been proven to be just as safe, or safer, than the bottled version.  This poster from Amery Hospital displays 10 ways to make drinking water more flavorful.   

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Get started guide: Healthy food and beverage environments

• Guide
• Sustainable food service operations
• Food

Hospital food service often mirrors general societal food consumption patterns.  However, the health mission and large purchasing power of hospitals make them excellent models and drivers for healthier food environments and systems. There is an emerging understanding that the “health” of a food choice is a combination of the nutritional benefits is provides, and the way in which that food was…

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Advocate Health Care: Food resolution antibiotics

• Food
• Antimicrobial
• EPP
• Purchasing
• Advocate Health Care
• Exemplary Document

While Advocate has a robust antimicrobial stewardship program for prescribing practices, the organization continues to purchase meat, poultry, seafood and dairy products that are produced with large amounts of non-therapeutic antibiotics. Their goal is to adopt a system-wide food procurement policy that includes the preferential purchasing of meat, poultry, seafood, and dairy products produced…

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Creating healthy retail food environments in health care facilities

• Food
• Food Service

Hospital workers experience an 8.6 percent higher burden of illnesses such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, hypertension, and obesity than the general U.S. workforce. Although patient meals are carefully calibrated for their nutritional profile and tailored for specific diets, food and beverages sold in hospital retail settings are often out of line with dietary recommendations. There are…

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University of Washington Medical Center: Food resolution antibiotics

• Food
• Antibiotics
• Exemplary Document
• University of Washington
• Exemplary Document

Antibiotic resistance directly impacts patient care in the hospital setting as an increasing number of hospital-acquired infections are now caused by highly resistant bacteria. This threat is growing in healthcare due to the widespread use of antibiotics, much of which is given needlessly and non-therapeutically to animals intended for food. University of Washington Medical Center is trying to …

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Purchasing oils and shortenings

• Food
• Purchasing
• Local and sustainable purchasing
• Sustainable procurement
• Guide

Questions to ask suppliers and to take into consideration when making purchasing decisions about oils and shortenings. 

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