The Food Farmacy Act of 2025 establishes a grant program to fund non-profit organizations and local governments in creating "healthy food pharmacies" that provide free nutritious food and nutritional counseling to low-income and food-insecure communities.
Emilia Sykes
Representative
OH-13
The Food Farmacy Act of 2025 establishes a federal grant program to fund the creation and operation of "healthy food pharmacies." These pharmacies will provide free, nutritious food and professional nutritional counseling, primarily targeting low-income and food-insecure communities. The goal is to improve public health outcomes by integrating access to healthy food with medical care. The program authorizes $10 million annually from 2026 through 2030 to support these efforts.
Food Farmacy Act Authorizes $10M Annually for Grants to Deliver Healthy Food and Nutrition Advice
The newly proposed Food Farmacy Act of 2025 is looking to tackle food insecurity and poor health outcomes by creating a federal grant program that merges nutrition with healthcare. Essentially, the government wants to fund "healthy food pharmacies"—places where people can get nutritious food and professional advice at the same time. Starting in 2026 and running through 2030, this bill authorizes $10 million every year for the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), working with the USDA, to hand out grants to set up and run these facilities.
Your Prescription for Produce: What These Pharmacies Do
Think of a food pharmacy as a targeted, clinical-level food bank. The bill (SEC. 3) requires these operations to give out healthy food—following USDA guidelines—alongside nutritional counseling from a qualified professional, like a registered dietitian or doctor. The key focus is on low-income, rural, and food-insecure communities. If you are enrolled in Medicaid or SNAP, you must receive both the food and the guidance for free. This is a direct attempt to support the federal “Food is Medicine” initiative, recognizing that what you eat is critical to your health outcomes. The grant money itself is flexible, covering everything from renovating a building or buying a mobile unit, to paying staff, and purchasing the actual healthy food for distribution.
Who Gets to Open a Food Farmacy and How They Keep the Lights On
Only non-profit healthcare providers, state or local government agencies, or Tribal organizations can apply for these grants, which are capped at $500,000 per entity per year. The catch? When applying, organizations have to submit a plan detailing how they will keep the food pharmacy running after the federal grant money runs out. This is a crucial detail (SEC. 3, Applying and Staying Open) because it puts the heavy lift of long-term sustainability squarely on the local organization. If you’re a non-profit director, this means you need a solid fundraising strategy lined up before you even receive the first dollar of federal funding. If that plan falls apart, the food pharmacy could close just a few years later, leaving the community back where it started.
Tracking the Results and Regulatory Flexibility
Grant recipients aren't just getting a check; they have to report back to the Secretary annually on key metrics. They must detail how many people they served, what their health conditions were, how much health improved, and what kind of food was distributed. This mandatory reporting is designed to build a data set showing whether linking food access to clinical care actually works. On a more technical note, the bill grants the Secretary the power to waive certain rules from Title XI of the Social Security Act if necessary to make this specific program run. While this flexibility could cut through red tape, it’s a broad power that needs careful oversight, as it allows for temporary exemptions from established regulatory requirements just to get this new program off the ground.