'Food Pharmacies' In Clinics: When The Diagnosis Is Chronic Hunger

"There's a new question that anti-hunger advocates want doctors and nurses to ask patients: Do you have enough food?"

"Public health officials say the answer often is 'not really.' So clinics and hospitals have begun stocking their own food pantries in recent years."

"One of the latest additions is Connectus Health, a federally funded clinic in Nashville, Tenn. This month, the rear of LaShika Taylor's office transformed into a community cupboard."

"It's a lot of nonperishables right now, just because we're just starting out," she says, but the clinic is working on refrigeration.

It's not that patients are starving, Connectus co-director Suzanne Hurley says. It's that they may have a lot of food one day and none the next. That's no way to manage a disease like diabetes, she says.

"I can prescribe medications all day, but if they can't do the other piece — which is a decent diet and just knowing they're not going to have to miss meals,' she says, "medications have to be managed around all of those things."