"Food is medicine. It's preventative healthcare." Dr. Karissa Merritt prescribes healthy food.

Summary: “Just because someone is in a low socioeconomic status does not mean that they should be relegated to chronic disease, as a result of their inability to afford quality food,” Dr. Merritt said. Dr. Karissa Merritt is prescribing healthy food to her patients and they can redeem those prescriptions at Crosslines and Springfield Community Gardens. The idea is to help patients who are food insecure. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports one in eight Missourians had difficulty at some point in 2018 providing enough food for everyone in their household. So, healthy food prescriptions were Dr. Merritt’s way of helping bridge that gap.