As we celebrate 38 years of service in 2026, Food Outreach continues our vital work as the region’s only medically tailored nutrition provider offering free, scratch-prepared, medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries and fresh produce, and individualized nutrition counseling with registered dietitians. Our Food Is Medicine (FIM) approach utilizes nutrition as a powerful tool for chronic illness management and treatment. By meeting clients where they are in their daily lives, in treatment cycles and dietary needs, we empower them to manage their health, regain strength, and improve quality of life.

In 2025, thanks to the unwavering commitment of our community of caring, Food Outreach built the processes and capacity needed to meet the national Food Is Medicine Coalition’s (FIMC) newly established Standards for Medically Tailored Meal (MTM) providers. With the dedication of our staff and volunteers, along with the trust and support of our donors, partners, and clients, we redesigned our menu, developed a wide variety of new recipes, and elevated our meals by transitioning from individually packed entrées and sides to three-compartment containers. These three-compartment meals are fully medically tailored and come with a nutrition label. Our new processes incorporate trusted nutrition guidelines, reflect our community’s needs, and standardize our meals to support heart health and healthy blood sugars.

Building on this momentum, we are proud to announce that in 2026, Food Outreach will achieve FIMC Accreditation, becoming the region’s only accredited non-profit MTM provider. This milestone reflects decades of our leadership in medically tailored nutrition services and positions the agency to expand services, drive innovation, and amplify our impact in the St. Louis region.

We can only do this because of the work of the 1,500 volunteers and 17 staff members whom we depend on each day. Clients share that our meals nourish their bodies, uplift them during difficult times, and relieve some of the heavy burdens of grocery shopping, cooking, and meal prepping with their symptoms and illness.

In 2025, Food Outreach provided 540,750 medically tailored meals to 1,807 clients across 144 zip codes. Over 3,800 of these meals were delivered straight to clients’ homes by our delivery drivers, ensuring access to nutrition regardless of barriers. Thanks to generous community support, we enrolled 508 new clients diagnosed with HIV or cancer. We are proud to say that we never waitlist clients for our services.

At a time when hunger and chronic illness continue to rise in this region, neighbors struggle with increasingly urgent nutrition-insecurity challenges. Over 80% of the individuals we serve live on less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) or $15,960 annual income; moreover, more than half of our clients live at age 55 or older. The majority of our clients face complicated challenges related to costs for health care, housing, utilities and groceries. As the USDA projects that there will be significant food cost increases in 2026, Food Outreach will remain a critical and consistent source of nutritious food for those we serve.

We bear witness to the importance of our mission and the need to continue providing nutritious, medically tailored meals and groceries to the most vulnerable members of our community. As our community endures many challenges, I am inspired by our shared commitment to address hunger and malnutrition. We do this by scaling our programs so that individuals, regardless of their circumstances, have access to the nutrition they need to thrive.