Erin Franey

Erin Franey is the Program Manager of the Food as Medicine Collaborative at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Erin oversees all aspects of strategic planning, communications, development, program evaluation, and dissemination of the Collaborative’s work. Erin cultivates partnerships across clinics, nonprofits, and food businesses to launch and sustain programs to address patient food insecurity. She works closely with medical directors and health systems leaders to align these initiatives with system-wide efforts to eliminate racial health disparities. Erin also co-facilitates a policy steering committee, where she advocates for the adoption of food support as covered medical benefits. Erin is driven by boundless curiosity and a commitment to build more just, healthy, and resilient food systems.

The Food as Medicine Collaborative at the San Francisco Department of Public Health is a multi-sector coalition bridging healthcare and food systems to address food insecurity and advance health equity. The Collaborative emerged in 2014 as a coalition implementing Food Pharmacies in clinics, pairing culturally relevant groceries with cooking demonstrations, nutrition education, health coaching, and resource referrals as part of patients’ medical care. The model now reaches sixteen clinics across five health systems with plans to scale to additional clinics. In 2019, the Collaborative initiated a policy campaign to include medically-supportive food and nutrition services as covered medical benefits. They have successfully advocated for the inclusion of a spectrum of food as medicine interventions in California’s Medicaid waiver and are now supporting statewide implementation.