OT professor prescribes fresh, free produce on campus
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On select Thursdays in late summer and early fall, UIC hosted a Fresh Food Farmacy, a farm stand offering prescribed fruits and vegetables at no cost to people struggling with diabetes and food insecurity.
Although the on-campus farm stand was new this year, the program began in 2023, when chief endocrinologist UI Health’s Diabetes & Endocrinology Clinic Brian Layden approached Heidi Fischer ’00 MS OT, ’15 OTD — associate head of OT and director of the OT Faculty Practice self-management service — about prescribing patients food as medicine.
Fischer connected with Just Roots Chicago, a local farm and education center whose mission is to increase community access to healthy, sustainably grown foods. With referrals from providers at the clinic — endocrinologists, occupational therapists, nurses and dieticians — patients brought prescriptions and vouchers to Just Roots’ farm on the south side for free produce from their Saturday market. While they were there, they could take a class or learn a recipe for preparing the fresh food.
When Fischer mentioned her work with the Fresh Food Farmacy and Just Roots to her OT students, Shen Li ’25 E-OTD knew he couldn’t miss the opportunity to get involved.
“I immediately enjoyed the experience of volunteering at Just Roots — it reminded me of my childhood, when I used to play and help out on my grandmother’s farm,” Li said. “After several volunteer sessions, I told Dr. Fischer I wanted to complete my capstone project at the farm, combining my professional goals with something personally meaningful.”
The first stage of Li’s capstone project was to conduct a needs assessment, determining how the clinic and the farm could better support the people utilizing these services.
“Many patients faced challenges visiting the farm to pick up produce due to busy schedules or limited access to transportation,” Li said. “Another common struggle was knowing how to properly prepare the vegetables. Many patients felt too tired after work or unsure how to make the vegetables taste good.”
Li collaborated with Fischer and other clinic providers throughout his capstone year to clarify the goals of the Fresh Food Farmacy, focusing on ways the program could address food insecurity, promote outdoor activity, encourage community engagement and increase the rate of participation.
Before his graduation in spring 2025, Li recommended shifting to a pop-up pantry model to increase accessibility. This fall, the program successfully hosted its first season of on-campus farm stand events.
“Hearing that news was incredibly rewarding — it showed that our collaborative efforts had made a tangible difference.”
Inside the Diabetes & Endocrinology Clinic’s Outpatient Care Center and outside of AHSB, the campus farm stands saw 100 visits and served 92 unique patients. Fischer turned no one away; in addition to handing out Just Roots produce to patients with prescriptions, she handed out her own homegrown produce to walk-up visitors without prescriptions. Volunteers also gave out resources in Spanish and English, to both clinic patients and walk-up visitors, with culturally tailored advice on food preparation, recipes, food storage and diabetes-friendly eating habits.
Li also developed a series of short educational videos on food preparation and cooking that were offered to farm stand visitors.
“After a long work day, they don’t need a complex cooking class — they need a quick, effective solution to make healthy eating easier.”
Fischer and Li presented the Fresh Food Farmacy model at the 2025 American Occupational Therapy Association annual conference, offering other practitioners guidance for developing similar program. They will also present this work at the World Federation of Occupational Therapy Conference in Bangkok, Thailand in February.
In the meantime, Fischer continues to pursue new growth for the Fresh Food Farmacy program. In addition to recruiting new student volunteers, from OT and from other programs throughout AHS, she is exploring how to bring farm stand events to the Lifespan Disability Clinic at 55th and Pulaski and other ways to increase access.
“The next step would be to provide for those who would benefit from a delivery. That’s something Shen was looking into with Just Roots,” Fischer said. “It could be beneficial for some who visit our clinic but might think I can’t even take this bag of food home because I’m riding the bus.”
“I connected the farm with DoorDash’s nonprofit delivery program, which provides discounted delivery services for food distribution,” Li said. “This partnership could allow the farm to expand its delivery options in the future.”
Though there is more work to be done in the years to come, Fischer recognizes the hard work and positive impact made by the Fresh Food Farmacy in 2025.
“I personally think it was really successful — just getting people to look into the program and see how beautiful this food is.”