Mobile Farmers Markets for New Yorkers with Serious Mental Illnesses

Grantee Name

Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene

Funding Area

Healthy Food, Healthy Lives

Publication Date

July 2025

Grant Amount

$200,000

Grant Date:

November 2021

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Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that satisfies their dietary needs and food preferences.

Food plays a key role in health—nutritious diets can prevent and manage disease. NYHealth’s Healthy Food, Healthy Lives priority area works at the intersection of health and food to improve access to healthy and affordable foods, reduce food insecurity, and promote equity. In New York State, 45,000 individuals with serious mental illness live in congregate homes and are more likely to worry about where their next meal is coming from. Challenges associated with mental disorders, including psychiatric symptoms and cognitive dysfunction, can affect the success of interventions designed to connect food-insecure communities with healthy foods. In 2021, NYHealth, after issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP), awarded the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene a grant to connect congregate housing residents with serious mental illness with healthy food.

Under this grant, the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), for which the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene manages grants, developed a program to help people with serious mental illness in group housing learn how to purchase, prepare, and eat healthy food. OMH also connected residents with fresh produce through mobile farmers markets.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Outcomes and Lessons Learned:

Partnered with four mobile food markets to offer affordable, nutritious foods in community residences and supportive housing programs for individuals with serious mental illness;
Convened a workgroup of professionals and individuals with lived experience to inform project design, and developed a six-lesson curriculum of hands-on workshops including healthy meal planning, shopping for fresh produce at the mobile market, making healthy snack choices, and using healthier preparation techniques;
Designed a training module for housing agency staff, who are key to ensuring residents’ access to and consumption of healthy foods. The module ensured that they not only could deliver but also practice the curriculum themselves;
Distributed 14,000 FreshConnect nutrition incentive coupons to participating housing agencies to facilitate residents’ purchase of healthy food;
Provided healthy foods lessons to 163 residents, 59 of whom completed the curriculum;
Conducted qualitative interviews with program clients, curriculum instructors, housing agency leadership, and mobile farmers market staff to assess real-time and post-program implementation and effectiveness.

Lessons learned from this pilot could inform the expansion of OMH’s mobile market program across New York State. Participants found the curriculum’s combination of teaching, discussion, activities, and structured field trips accessible and engaging. One staff instructor described how much people enjoyed the lessons and hands-on activities. An instructor said that one of the clients sent pictures of the salads that they made after the class.

Both instructors and clients reported that they had begun preparing and eating more vegetables as a result of the intervention. The curriculum contributed to this success. OMH noted that mobile farmers market staff’s eagerness to assist clients with purchases increased their comfort buying fruits and vegetables and their willingness to return. And their evaluation showed that attending more lessons increased participants’ confidence in purchasing and preparing healthy foods.

The project team did experience some challenges. Mobile market vendor staffing shortages and rising operating costs prevented two of the four markets from stopping directly at the housing sites during the project’s second year. As a result, the project team worked closely with the Department of Agriculture and Markets to identify other mobile food markets or farmers markets within a short distance.

Co-Funding and Additional Funds Leveraged: OMH is actively seeking additional funding for continued iterations of this project. 

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