Our Mission
Fullwell works to create a healthy, just and sustainable food system and to put an end to food insecurity.
We focus on developing policies and programs in California related to the food safety net and public food procurement that have the potential to be replicated across the country.
Our Campaigns
Fruit & Vegetable Supplemental Benefits
Goal: Reduce hunger, improve health, and support California’s agricultural economy by making fruit and vegetable supplemental benefits (also known as healthy food incentives) a permanent supplement to the state’s CalFresh food assistance program.
Medically Supportive Food & Nutrition
Goal: Improve health outcomes and reduce hunger by making medically supportive food and nutrition (food-based interventions integrated into healthcare used to prevent, treat, and reverse diet-sensitive medical conditions) permanent Medi-Cal benefits.
Good Food Purchasing
Goal: Build a more local and sustainable food supply chain by aligning public food procurement budgets at schools, hospitals and jails with the Good Food Purchasing framework.
Fruit & Vegetable Supplemental Benefits
Fruit and vegetable supplemental benefit programs, which provide low-income families with matching dollars when they buy California-grown fruits and vegetables, make healthy food more affordable while also supporting California farmers. Numerous organizations have piloted these initiatives, also commonly known as healthy food incentive programs, at grocery stores and farmers’ markets in California and nationally. Evaluations from those programs in California – including Double Up Food Bucks, which is run by Fullwell – and others nationally, show that they reduce hunger, improve health, and boost the agricultural economy.
Fullwell’s goal is to make healthy food incentives a permanent supplement to the state’s CalFresh program (formerly known as food stamps). The establishment of the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Program was the first step in this direction.
Since its launch, we have co-sponsored multiple bills and budget requests in the California legislature to expand this program with the ultimate goal of making it available at grocery store and farmers markets statewide.
Medically Supportive Food & Nutrition
Medically supportive food and nutrition (MSF&N) interventions, commonly known as “food as medicine,” are food-based interventions integrated into healthcare used to prevent, treat, and reverse diet-sensitive medical conditions. The spectrum of MSF&N interventions includes: medically tailored meals, medically supportive meals, food pharmacies, medically tailored groceries, medically supportive groceries, produce prescriptions and nutrition supports when paired with food provision.
Beginning in 2019, Fullwell and a coalition of nearly 100 organizations advocated for California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, to pay for MSF&N interventions. The coalition was successful and in December 2021 California recognized the critical role of nutrition and its influence on health outcomes and health equity through its inclusion of food-based interventions in California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal, better known as CalAIM. CalAIM is California’s 5-year waiver that allows the state to test innovative ways to provide care to patients.
Fullwell’s goal is to make medically supportive food and nutrition interventions permanent Medi-Cal benefits. To learn more about the work of the coalition visit the MSF&N coalition’s website.
Good Food Purchasing
Institutional food procurement is one of the best levers we have to improve the food supply chain. To pull this lever Fullwell has been advocating for local schools, hospitals and carceral facilities to adopt the Good Food Purchasing Program through resolutions and ordinances since 2016. The Program supports public institutions in evaluating how well their food purchasing supports a healthy, local, sustainable and fair food supply chain by measuring their purchases against a comprehensive evaluation framework.
As more and more institutions adopt the Good Food Purchasing Program, it becomes even more powerful as a policy tool. That’s because, like with the LEED green building rating system, the more food service directors ask their vendors to meet the program’s guidelines, the more demand shifts towards rewarding better business practices. As of September 2023, twelve institutions from across the Bay Area all participate in the program and publicly share their purchasing data.
Fullwell’s goal is to build greater aligned demand for good food across the region and pass supportive policies to ultimately improve the local food system.