Fourteen years ago, Ashley Tyrner Dolce found herself a single mother dependent on food stamps to feed herself and her six-year-old daughter.
Dolce parlayed that personal challenge into a plan to help solve a more global problem: She founded FarmboxRx in 2014 to help ameliorate food insecurity, which directly affects about 20 million people in the US, while at the same time improving the health of vulnerable communities she was once a part of.
“Healthy foods should be accessible to all,” Dolce proclaims. Yet nearly 50 million US people experience either food insecurity and/or a lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet. “This makes food the center of one of the largest public health crises in our country,” says Dolce.
“I would characterize the food situation in the US as disastrous. Diet-related chronic disease in this country is … a big problem. And it’s a problem that the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS]
and the US government in general have never really spoken to, never really collaborated on” effectively, she says.
Dolce says that our treatment of chronic conditions related to the long-implicated Standard American Diet – in fact, our treatment of health care in this country in general –
“has been very reactive rather than proactive.” Today, the country’s “really at a crossroads,” she says, “where we have to begin thinking through the proactive lens. Yeah, because we just cannot sustain.”
About 133 million US people, or nearly half the population, suffer from at least one chronic health condition. This number is projected to reach 170 million by 2030.
That is simply not acceptable to such like Dolce. Thus, her quest to make “health and prevention” primary, trumping mere “treatment of disease.”
For example, there’s no excuse for the fact that we can accurately predict US health outcomes just by zip code, says Dolce. FarmboxRx set out to address those regional and other social determinants of health [SDOH], especially when it comes to food access and education. Because there’s a long-studied, well-documented, critical link between nutrition and health, and because we have proven that we can largely prevent chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and even some types of cancer, through a better diet and other lifestyle choices largely in our control.
So, FarmboxRx delivers wholesome foods that meet the demands of the millions of US people living in food deserts, those who lack easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables, some of us take for granted.
Critically, FarmboxRx became in 2021 the first and only national online grocery delivery service approved for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP] / EBT nationwide, those aforementioned “food stamps” on which Dolce’s family once relied. The program serves millions of underserved people through the USDA.
The company has partnered with nearly 100 health plans across the country, which then tailor life- and cost-saving benefits to their members, customized and personalized for each plan’s nutrition and health literacy objectives: Members receive through a refrigerated FedEx box a regular delivery of culturally, linguistically, and medically appropriate offerings without having to travel or spend excessively. The idea is to build lasting healthy eating habits, says Dolce.
Such a health care plan “integration” of good eating habits is a central pillar in the FarmboxRx mission: With nearly 70 percent of all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries citing food insecurity as their primary social concern, FarmboxRx delivers a sustainable solution that improves health outcomes through refined eating habits. The idea has led to more integration of nutrition into overall patient care plans.
Dolce pioneered the movement and lobbied for better food policies to help make nutrition a covered health intervention. She was one of the earliest proponents of the “food-as-medicine” movement.
“We’re a mission-driven ‘food-as-medicine company’ that provides fresh produce and healthy groceries to people in need, particularly through Medicare and Medicaid programs,” says Ashley Tyrner Dolce, CEO and founder of FarmboxRx.
- Accessibility & Equity – FarmboxRx prioritizes vulnerable communities, ensuring that nutritious food reaches those who need it most.
- Sustainability & Local Sourcing – By working with local farmers & sustainable suppliers, FarmboxRx supports regional food systems, thus reducing waste.
- Technology & Data-Driven Impact – FarmboxRx leverages technology to track health outcomes & measure the effectiveness of food-as-medicine programs.
- Delivering Produce as a Medicare Benefit – Ashley Tyrner Dolce went from food stamp recipient to growing a company that hit No. 100 on the 2023 Inc. 5000.
“In my mind, you know, if you have a chronic diet-related disease, the natural path should be when you’re at your provider’s office that you are given a prescription for food, you’re given a prescription for a dietitian to teach you how to eat for your chronic condition,” says Dolce.
“And that should be your path forward, rather than a doctor just giving you insulin, giving statins. Right? So, we haven’t stepped back in this country and taken the deep dive of how do we address these diet-related diseases that can completely be reversed, by the way, through proper accessibility to healthy food, education on how to eat for your condition, and then affordability.”
“Everyone wants to be healthy,” says Dolce. “They just can’t afford it. They don’t have accessibility, and they don’t have the education to go with it. If you solve those three things, people will take the self-efficacy journey.”