CARIBOU, Maine — For the past three years, Cary Medical Center has participated in a grant program called Partnerships to Improve Community Health (PICH). This year, the focus is on increasing access to healthy foods at worksites, and is an opportunity for Cary to model healthy workplace and environmental changes.
Cary’s Nutritional Services department has been making some changes in the cafeteria in order to improve the health and wellness of employees, volunteers, patients and community members.
Kim Parent, community outreach coordinator for Power of Prevention, has been working with Micah Desmond, director of support services, to implement the changes.
“Cary is going above and beyond with this focus on healthier hospital foods. They are actually making more changes then we were required to do,” said Parent. “It’s very exciting to see the changes we discussed making being put into place.”
Cary is now offering reduced size portions of different foods in the cafeteria. They have also added a new cooler in the cafeteria that will have different sized options for healthier snack foods, salads and sandwiches. Cary is also purchasing and using more local foods in the cafeteria, as well as making more foods from scratch and reducing the amount of sodium in the foods that they are serving.
“It’s a big responsibility to serve the hundreds of employees in the cafeteria every day. We want to offer a healthier food selection and reduced portions in the cafeteria to meet the needs of all of our employees, volunteers, patients and community members.” said Desmond.
Cary will be purchasing more local foods as they become available throughout the season and will be adding additional healthy food selections in the new cooler every week.
The healthier hospital foods project is supported through funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, EMHS and the Partnerships to Improve Community Health.
To learn more about the healthier hospital foods project, contact Kim Parent at kimparent@carymed.org or call 540-3659.
