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Tackling Our Healthcare Crisis by Growing Food with Thi Squire: PYP 228

Thi Squire is the garden manager for Homestead Hospital, located 35 miles south of Miami on Florida's east coast.

Wait, what? Garden manager? At a hospital? In a county with 30% of the population on food stamps?

Yup.

Thi (pronounced “Tee”), a longtime urban gardener and sales rep in the burgeoning farm-to-table industry in South Florida, talked her way into a position growing fresh organic produce for the hospital cafeteria.

Not only that, she began using the 10 acre garden to educate and inspire members of the community of Homestead (which see describes as an agricultural center that's also a food desert) to start cooking with whole, fresh, organic plant foods.

Her “Grow 2 Heal” and “Grow Your Lunch” programs are proving incredibly popular with kids and adults alike, and are introducing thousands of farm workers to the culinary potential of the plants they tend and harvest every day.

Thi's infectious enthusiasm, knowledge of gardening, understanding of the root causes of chronic disease, and green thumb, are slowly transforming the culture of Homestead Hospital – and for the better.

I was thrilled to get to spend an hour on the phone with Thi. After writing and talking for so long about what's wrong with healthcare, it was refreshing to focus on a creative, wholistic solution. And one that's so doable, replicable, and ROI-positive.

We covered:

  • the demographics of Homestead: low income, underserved, diverse, legal and undocumented immigrants
  • why most food grown in Homestead doesn't stay in Homestead
  • the burden of chronic disease on the community and the hospital
  • why prevention of chronic disease makes financial, as well as ethical sense for the Baptist Health System (of which Homestead is a part)
  • “If you don't know how to cook and I give you produce, you're not going to eat it.”
  • CEO Bill Duquette's vision for the 10 acres of hospital land that were just growing weeks
  • “We're a hospital. Why would we have a garden?”
  • the importance of educating the hospital staff on the basics of health
  • the culinary delights of fresh produce, herbs, and spices
  • why food texture is crucial (vs mom's mushy vegetables and the overcooked green beans in your high school cafeteria)
  • selling basil, chives, and arugula to South Florida restaurants before it was cool (and before anyone had tasted them)
  • why we need to focus on taste rather than health when first educating people about fresh food
  • people haven't eaten a real tomato in their lives
  • “I don't eat it ‘like that'” – common refrain
  • the Grow Your Lunch K-12 field trips
  • losing family recipes and family heritage – “you can't Google grandma's signature dish”
  • how hospital staff are responding to the garden initiative
  • training the hospital cooks and chefs to add plant-based options to the menu (Food Forward training from the Humane Society)
  • investing $2000 per person can save up to $100,000 in unneeded medical bills
  • the charming sunflower initiative – bringing joy to a stressful environment
  • and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

Links

Thi's story in the Miami Herald

About Homestead Hospital

The Grow 2 Heal Community Garden

Grow 2 Heal Video (less than 2 minutes)

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Tonight and tomorrow (September 19 and 20, 2017), Josh LaJaunie and I are sharing the “7 High Hurdles to Weight Loss and Health” in webinar format. Both webinars are the same basic content (and both are live), so you can register for the more convenient one.

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The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

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Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Trigger-Free Leadership: Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high  performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.

Disclosure

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Hi, I’m Howard Jacobson, host of the Plant Yourself Podcast, co-author of You Can Change Other People and Sick to Fit, and co-founder of WellStart Health Coach Academy.

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