A new community garden in Ocean County is expected to provide thousands of pounds of fresh produce for families in need. Grown out of a collaboration between Community Medical Center, RWJBarnabas Health and Sadie Vickers Resource Center, the plot’s debut coincides with National Hunger Action Month.

Community members, local officials and executives gathered Sept. 12 to celebrate the Sadie Vickers Community Garden, located at 62 First Ave. in South Toms River. The space will offer residents access to healthy foods as well as nutrition and wellness education in an area lacking supermarkets or easily available produce and other nutritious foods.

The garden aims to address food insecurity and social determinants of health, as well as to improve health outcomes. It is part of larger efforts by RWJBarnabas to tackle these issues in the state’s most vulnerable communities.

According to figures from the New Jersey Office of the Food Security Advocate, nearly 1 million (or 1-in-9) state residents have reported experiencing food insecurity. Meanwhile, data from Feeding America sets the food insecure population in Ocean County at 67,500, or 10.6%. Estimates place 69% of the region’s population below the SNAP threshold.

Coming together

“Our mission is to make our communities healthier. We do it through providing care for the sick and injured. We do it through providing and addressing the social determinants of health,” said Mark Manigan, president and CEO, RWJBarnabas Health.

“This kind of project is really what RWJBarnabas Health is all about: connecting with our community, doing it through faith-based organizations who have that special relationship with the community and can connect us to the needs of their communities. It’s having relationships like this that enable us to deliver our mission,” Manigan said.

CMC and RWJBarnabas Health staff volunteered their time to help the garden grow, planting seeds and setting up 100 “earthboxes.”

“Our commitment to helping build a healthier New Jersey is not limited to efforts within our hospital’s four walls,” said CMC Chief Executive Officer Patrick Ahearn. “If we want to grow a healthier New Jersey, we have to literally plant the seeds, close to home. Through our partnership with Sadie Vickers Resource Center, we are addressing hunger in an innovative way, expanding healthy food access and education in South Toms River.”

“We thank Community Medical Center and RWJBarnabas Health for partnering with us to bring this garden to our community,” said Sadie Vickers Resource Center’s CEO, Rev. David Graham, chief executive officer. “Local residents are really going to benefit from the healthy produce and nutritional education.”

Growing efforts

The state highlights six dimensions of food insecurity: availability, access, utilization, stability, agency and sustainability.

RWJBarnabas’ efforts to address food insecurity extend throughout the state.

The Beth Greenhouse at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is a sustainable, hydroponic greenhouse that produces over 5,000 pounds of high-quality, nutritious foods for Newark-area residents each year. RWJBarnabas Health also operates two “Food Farmacies” in collaboration with local partners in Newark and Jersey City. The outposts provide one-stop support for patients to get healthy foods and diagnosis-specific, culturally competent nutrition education.

The efforts join those by other Garden State health care providers, like AtlantiCare. The South Jersey operator rolled out a new mobile unit to tackle food insecurity this summer. Virtua Health, too, has hit the road to meet the needs of the communities it serves.