Esperanza Health Center: Utilizing Full Plate Living Shared Medical Appointments to Support Patients and Community
Dr. Daniel Chen, a physician at Esperanza Health Center, is passionate about supporting his patients and community in Philadelphia through Lifestyle Medicine-informed primary care. He uses evidence-based strategies to address root causes of disease and make inroads for systemic change in how multidisciplinary, culturally informed primary care is delivered to support true healing and well-being.
To achieve this vision of true healing, Dr. Chen utilizes Full Plate Living, a free service of AIH, in his practice. “Full Plate Living has been a wonderfully packaged program for immediate usage in our community healthcare setting. We are able to deliver primary medical care in a format that supports mutual clinician and patient goals for bidirectional learning, efficient delivery of educational content, relationship building, and communal satisfaction while everyone has fun and grows in self-efficacy for healing and well-being,” says Dr. Chen.
Over the last 15 months, Dr. Chen and his team at Esperanza Health Center have run six cohorts of the Full Plate Living Shared Medical Appointment (SMA) Program, adapted for their patient/community population. Each of their SMA visits includes four components:
Didactics (Full Plate Living SMA curriculum)
Live recipe demos and tastings (ingredients and produce provided for participants to take home)
Behavioral health support and group activities (Full Plate Living incorporated)
Accessible group movement
AIH is delighted to support physicians like Dr. Chen who are helping us achieve our vision: a future where healthy environments and lifestyles provide equitable and preferred methods to prevent, treat, and reverse chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
About Full Plate Living: Full Plate Living is a research-backed nutrition program that connects individuals to their purpose and teaches them how to add more whole, unprocessed fiber foods to the meals they’re already eating. The Full Plate Living approach is about making small, sustainable changes, and it works!
About the Full Plate Living SMA Program: The program, offered free of cost by AIH, can be delivered in an 8-session, 4-session, or 1-session format, and all needed materials are provided (program slide deck, patient handouts, provider documentation note template, provider implementation guide including information about typical billing practices, and access to a recorded webinar: Implementing Shared Medical Appointments). The Full Plate Living SMA is designed to make it easy for clinicians to share the Full Plate Living approach with their patients and bill insurance for their time. And, like Dr. Chen, clinicians can adapt the program for their patient/community population if desired.
