Sustaining Iowa: Making the Connection between Food, Health and the Land
Date: Monday, November 10th, 2008 to Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 
Location: Iowa City, Cedar Falls and Ames, Iowa
"Good food is good for the people who eat it, good for the people who grow it and it's really good for the planet."
Dr. Preston Maring, associate physician-in-chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, California, made presentations in three Iowa cities about how food is one of the most important determinants of health.
Dr. Maring is responsible for tertiary care services planning and development for Oakland’s 200,000 health plan members as well as members from around the Northern California region. He has been at the hospital for more than 37 years. An enthusiastic cook, he helped start a Friday Fresh Farmers Market for hospital staff, visitors and the community in 2003. The project has resulted in different market models, community outreach and a program-wide focus on health eating. Markets are now offered at nearly 30 other Kaiser Permanente facilities in several states. He has his own blog that gets more than 50,000 page views each month with weekly recipes for fresh produce.
More recently, Maring worked with Kaiser Permanente and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers to create a system that sources product for inpatient meals from small family farmers. He believes that the availability of healthy food choices is fundamentally important in support of Kaiser Permanente's wide-reaching health education and health maintenance programs that are sponsored within the program and in the community.
This lecture was sponsored by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture,
Related information
Listen to Dr. Maring's presentation and view overheads [Adobe Connect]
Download bio and contact info [PDF]
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture |
Ames, Iowa 50011 |
(515) 294-3711 |
leocenter@iastate.edu