Connecting New Yorkers with the Food They Need to Thrive

Healthy food systems planning and capacity-building: Projects will empower communities to design, coordinate, and implement food plans. Regional food planning efforts will make healthy, local food more affordable and accessible. Projects in this area include:

Nutrition benefit programs: Projects make it easier for people to enroll in and use nutrition benefit programs. Projects in this area include the expansion of:

Healthier, culturally responsive food purchasing in public institutions: Schools, Head Start programs, senior centers, homeless shelters, and other public institutions will use their purchasing power to provide healthier meals to millions of New Yorkers, while also creating additional opportunities for smaller farmers and suppliers, particularly people of color, to compete for institutional contracts. Projects in this area include:

Food Is Medicine: Health care providers and payers will connect patients in need with healthy food, through medically tailored meals and healthy food prescription programs. Projects in this area include:


For more information about this priority area, please contact

Senior Program Officer

Julia McCarthy

Julia McCarthy

Senior Program Officer

Julia McCarthy

As Senior Program Officer, Julia McCarthy helps lead NYHealth’s Healthy Food, Healthy Lives priority area, the goal of which is to create a more equitable food system that connects all New Yorkers with the food they need to thrive.

Prior to joining NYHealth, Julia served as the deputy director of the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College of Columbia University, where she oversaw operations, strategy, and project execution. Julia also held policy roles at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Julia holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Georgetown University and a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar. She has served on the advisory committee on public policy for the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior and on the food retail advisory board for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

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Program Officer

Andrew Barrett

Andrew Barrett

Program Officer

Andrew Barrett

As a Program Officer, Andrew Barrett supports NYHealth’s Healthy Food, Healthy Lives priority area, which works to create a more equitable food system that connects all New Yorkers with the food they need to thrive.

Throughout his career, Andrew has delivered and led programs in food education, food access, and agriculture in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to joining NYHealth, he served as the Food Ed Hub Director at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. In that role, he facilitated the work of the Food Ed Coalition and led the development of programming, resources, and advocacy priorities for food and nutrition education partners in NYC and beyond. During his time in New York, Andrew has also worked as the Program Director for FoodCorps New York and Edible Schoolyard NYC, led school garden programming at NYC Parks GreenThumb, and served as a Craig Murphey Fellow with Hunger Free America.

Andrew holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Master of Science degrees in Horticulture and Agroecology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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People wearing Delivery of healthy food items and groceries to woman at home during COVID-19 pandemic.