The Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (TKC) is proud to announce that it has been officially selected to join the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities. This marks a significant step forward in our collective mission to elevate teaching kitchens and their vital role in improving human and planetary health.
Our commitment includes:
- Expanding access to hands-on nutrition education, empowering consumers to make healthy choices. The TKC will support and grow its diverse membership of 58 university, corporate, hospital, and community teaching kitchens–as well as our 250+ individual members–to identify and create new opportunities to optimize teaching kitchen implementation and reach people who are food insecure or at-risk for food insecurity. The TKC will also work to further refine and enhance our Food Is Medicine (FIM) Map – designed by Google engineers – that enables individuals to easily identify local FIM assets such as medically tailored meals, fresh food pharmacies, teaching kitchens, and nutrition incentive programs.
- Integrating nutrition and health by strengthening health professionals’ education in nutrition. Through a highly collaborative effort, and in partnership with the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the TKC is developing nutrition education competencies for medical practitioners, trainees, and other health professionals. After publication of these competencies, the TKC will pursue the creation of an online repository of curricular materials, enabling health professionals to advise their patients about how to make healthy food and lifestyle choices, and giving medical schools across the country access to curricula that covers the agreed upon competencies, is open source, and is regularly updated.
- Enhancing nutrition research through research studies conducted across the TKC’s 58 member organizations, including a multi-site trial currently underway. Through research outcomes, the TKC will demonstrate the impact of teaching kitchen programs, translate it into action for improved access, and encourage widespread integration and third-party coverage of these hands-on educational interventions.
At the heart of our commitment lies the transformative power of teaching kitchens, and our robust membership of organizations and professionals who work tirelessly to help people make healthier choices in how they eat, think and move their bodies. Together, we’re taking concrete steps towards building healthier, stronger communities.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive regular updates on our progress towards these commitments. You can find out more about becoming a member of the TKC here.
About the Challenge