Community health and wellbeing is an important part of LEAP’s work and our commitment to nurturing our food community. Food Is Medicine (FIM) recognizes that access to nutritious food is essential for preventing, managing, and treating diet-related health conditions. LEAP partners with organizations across Virginia to support FIM efforts across the region and state. We do this by taking a whole-system approach through: 

• LEAP Programs and Harvest Bucks that increase food security, 
• Southwest Virginia Produce Prescription Program (SWPRx) as a medical treatment intervention, and
• The prioritization and integration of local food, grown by local farmers, into community interventions.

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Prevention through Food Access

At the everyday community support level, Food Is Medicine includes food access programs like WIC, SNAP, and nutrition incentive programs like Virginia Fresh Match and LEAP Harvest Bucks. These programs provide support to help prevent diet-related conditions by helping people stretch their food budgets to take home more produce. LEAP additionally brings food to communities with limited physical or financial access through the Mobile Market, which helps to further increase community access to fresh food. 

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LEAP’s food access programs help to improve people’s access to and incorporation of fresh food into their diets. In 2025, LEAP helped households with low income stretch their food dollars with $519,000 in food access support. This directly supported local farmers and contributed to a $2.08M local economic impact and overarching community wellbeing. Check out LEAP’s 2025 Annual Report, which shares more about our community impact.  

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Produce Prescription Treatment

FIM also includes healthcare-based interventions designed to manage or treat disease, such as produce prescription programs like Southwest Virginia Produce Prescription Program (SWPRx), medically tailored groceries, and medically tailored meals. 

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For people with limited financial resources, managing diet-related conditions like type 2 diabetes and hypertension can be challenging. LEAP partners with Carilion Clinic, Virginia Fresh Match, Feeding Southwest Virginia, and Radford University to address these challenges through the Southwest Virginia Produce Prescription Program (SWPRx). SWPRx is a 6-month program that helps adult Medicaid patients with diet-related health risks to obtain free fruits and vegetables and nutrition education. 

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By incorporating healthy food access and nutrition education into medical care, SWPRx

• Supports better health and quality of life and helps with disease management.
• Helps to establish access and supports long-term healthy habits among program participants.
• Strengthens local food systems by supporting farmers, local businesses, and economies.

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The SWPRx program builds on over 10 years of Produce Rx programs in Roanoke and is in its second year of a 3-year research and expansion effort, federally funded by the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP). We are excited to more deeply integrate SWPRx into our health and community resources and expand SWPRx to additional sites. Check out our impact results from our 2025 (year 1) SWPRx participants, learn more about SWPRx and hear about SWPRx from past participant Lisa Webb.

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