This piece is part of the weekly series “Growing Forward: Insights for Building Better Food and Agriculture Systems,” presented by the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and the nonprofit organization Food Tank. Each installment highlights forward-thinking strategies to address today’s food and agriculture related challenges with innovative solutions. To view more pieces in the series, click here.
At Instacart, our mission is simple: to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. For too many families, though, nutritious food remains out of reach. As U.S. food insecurity rises and chronic diet-related diseases become more prevalent, the connection between nutrition and health has never been clearer.
Since launching Instacart Health, we’ve worked to bridge the gap between food access and health outcomes by leveraging our technology, partnerships, research, and advocacy. Along the way, we’ve seen two powerful opportunities for the private sector to partner with governments: first, through direct, innovative collaborations that deliver tangible results — and second, by leveraging our learnings to help inform public policy.
On the former, for example, we were proud to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help bring Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) online and become the first online grocery marketplace to expand it to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., making it easier for millions of families to access nutritious food. We’ve since expanded to offer EBT SNAP payments across nearly 180 retail banners and more than 30,000 stores nationwide. And last year, we introduced a SNAP eligibility screener directly on our platform, allowing anyone to easily check if they could qualify for SNAP and find relevant state resources to enroll.
At the local level, programs like our Grocery Access Program Pilot in Columbia, South Carolina, and the Montgomery County Groceries Program in Maryland—both of which leverage Instacart Health technology to unlock grocery delivery for families facing food insecurity — are delivering measurable impact, including evidence of improved food access and healthier food choices. In DC, our latest and largest government partnership with the city’s Department of Health is helping families put more fruits and vegetables on their tables by giving 1,000 D.C. households access to monthly online grocery stipends through Fresh Funds, a program that allows providers to fund category-specific stipends, like fresh and frozen produce. Together, these initiatives show how public-private partnerships can expand food access and give every family the dignity and convenience of choice through online grocery.
The insights we’ve gleaned from these and other programs can be powerful in shaping public policies to combat hunger and nutrition insecurity. That’s why we recently released our new Instacart Health Policy Agenda, outlining our top policy recommendations and advocacy commitments in two focus areas: strengthening and modernizing food assistance programs and integrating nutrition into healthcare. This new agenda serves as a roadmap for how policymakers, private companies, and nonprofits can work together to expand access to nutritious food for all and improve health outcomes in communities across the country.
Among the nation’s first large-scale food access and nutrition programs, SNAP and Women, Infant, and Children programs (WIC) laid the foundation for nationwide food as medicine initiatives, ensuring millions of families could put healthy food on the table. That’s exactly why we’re advocating for their modernization. These programs remain as vital today as ever, and they deserve the tools and infrastructure needed to maximize their impact.
During the pandemic, online grocery shopping became a lifeline—saving time, reducing stress and perceived stigma, and even encouraging healthier purchases. Research from No Kid Hungry and the University of Kentucky found that families shopping online with SNAP bought an average of $5.24 more in fruits and vegetables without increasing their total grocery bill. By bringing programs like WIC online, we can help more families shop with dignity and flexibility while improving health outcomes. It’s also why our agenda calls for making the online SNAP pilot program permanent.
We’ve also seen firsthand how that food access can serve as a powerful form of preventive care. Across the country, states are incorporating food as medicine interventions into Medicaid and Medicare, with promising early results. Medically-tailored groceries and produce prescriptions are helping patients manage chronic conditions and improve key markers of health while reducing overall healthcare costs. To scale these solutions, we’re calling on legislators to enact clear policy guidance, streamlined waivers, and efficient billing systems that make nutrition-based care easier to implement at scale.
Finally, no conversation about nutrition security is complete without the consideration of children’s needs. We’re calling for expanded universal school meal programs and encouraging states to opt into the Summer EBT program, ensuring every child has access to healthy food year-round.
We’re proud to play our part in improving health outcomes. Our new Instacart Health Policy Agenda and growing network of public-private partnerships reflect our belief that expanding access to nutritious food is one of the most powerful ways to strengthen communities and advance public health. That’s because everyone deserves access not only to the food they love, but to the nutrition they need to live a healthy life.
Photo courtesy of Annie Spratt, Unsplash
