Aisha Achesah and Jennie Hull (pictured above, left to right) have a six-years-and-counting friendship forged in a shared belief: healthy food is essential to healing, and should be available to everyone.
Hull, Nourishing Hope’s chief program officer, and Achesah, Assistant Director of Health Equity Programs at UI Chicago, first connected in 2018. At the time, Achesah was working in the community health department at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. The two met when Hull joined a community equity council that Achesah was leading.
“As a public health professional, I worked with a group of social workers in the oncology department.. We noticed – in our oncology patients specifically – that food insecurity was an issue. Access to healthy and fresh produce was an issue,” Achesah said.
Achesah and her colleagues wanted to create a program to address the food insecurity and need for nutritious food that they were seeing among oncology patients “With that need often comes the need for a lot of wraparound services,” she said. “The social workers introduced me to Nourishing Hope (then called Lakeview Pantry), and I came to find out that Nourishing Hope provides it all.”
Achesah connected with Greg Nergaard, Nourishing Hope’s Product Sourcing Coordinator. Together, they began coordinating food distributions and planning to scale the program to reach more patients in need.
Bags of food ready for patients at one of the first Health & Hope food distributions.
Having support from Health & Hope means that patients have one less thing for them to worry about. In its inception, patients could receive a bag of food that they could eat right away. They were also provided with information about Nourishing Hope’s walk-in food pantries and social services. “I’m a passionate person about the work I do in food insecurity,” Acheshah said. “When I met Jennie and she shared her story with me, I became even more passionate about the work – specifically around breast cancer.”
Hull is a breast cancer survivor of seven years. “When I heard about Health & Hope and knew that it started with oncology, all I could think about was how difficult it was when I was going through chemo,” she said.
“I know how important nutrition and calories are to fighting this illness and recovering from the treatment. And I know just how weak and sick I felt. I couldn’t imagine having to then go and try to find food or go to a pantry during that time,” Hull said.
Hull felt moved to help Achesah expand the program. “We were excited to figure out – how can we grow this program? Aisha created this program that is now much bigger than just Illinois Masonic,” she said. Outside the work that Achesah and Hull were doing with Illinois Masonic’s patient population, Health & Hope was developing and growing to serve more people at more hospital locations, looking at each hospital’s greatest need, and launching the program in the department related to that need.
Then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Achesah had another innovative idea. She reached out to Hull and asked about the possibility of creating pop-up farmers markets in some of the city’s hardest-hit, underserved communities.
“In Belmont Cragin, parts of Avondale, Humboldt Park, and other areas where we typically see people of color, food access is a problem. They don’t have grocery stores in some areas, which is really unfortunate,” Achesah said.
Jennie Hull and Aisha Achesah working a pop-up farmers market event for the Health & Hope program.
The Health & Hope program pop-up farmers markets were originally implemented in the communities that all fell within Illinois Masonic’s primary service area. Achesah and Hull worked together during the pandemic to expand that reach to include communities that were hit hard by food insecurity. They’ve kept that scope of service to this day.
“I remember what it was like to first open the boxes of produce at that time and think, ‘This is so amazing!’,” Achesah said. “The produce was such great quality and such an amazing assortment of food,” she said.
A picture of boxed produce from a pop-up farmers market taken by Aisha Achesah.
Achesah and Hull both emphasized that hospitals connect people to the program. Nourishing Hope provides the food, and the Health & Hope partners manage the rest. UI Health, where Achesah now works, has the Health & Hope program. Additional hospitals and partners include Swedish Hospital, World Relief, Humble Design, Emmaus, Cara Collective, HHPLift and Naomi’s House.
Hull is proud of Achesah, her friend and colleague. “It’s all because of her vision,” Hull said. As far as continuing to grow the program, Achesah said that there is only one thing holding them back – more funding.
With additional volunteer and monetary support, the Health & Hope program can continue to grow. In addition to food, all Health & Hope program participants receive information on social services support, and instructions on how to enroll in Nourishing Hope’s Online Market.
“Through Health & Hope, we’re able to educate our patients – not just on what we can give them when they leave the hospital – but to let them know that if food access is an ongoing issue for you, Nourishing Hope can help. They take away the stigma and offer choices, so people can take home food they enjoy.” Achesah said.
Jennie Hull and Aisha Achesah pose together for a selfie.
There is no question about it – these two dedicated women have helped this program flourish and feed people. Hull and Achesah’s friendship continues to flourish too. “After six years, I look forward to many, many more,” Achesah said.