Perhaps it’s fitting that a college located on an island could be seen as providing a bridge to the future, but that’s exactly what Touro University California DO/MPH student Timothy Kim is hoping happens with Pharm Fresh.
Pharm Fresh, in one light, is an urban farming initiative, but from Kim’s perspective represents a paradigm shift in how communities and individuals currently interact with their food, and how agriculture and healthcare professionals can work together with community advocates to reshape how food can promote the health of communities.
Kim won the Student Shark Tank at Touro, which helped him push Pharm Fresh forward and, in earning a San Francisco Bay Area Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, the concept took off and it’s now a fiscally sponsored non-profit urban farm.
A team of healthcare students, agriculture students, doctors, farmers, soil engineers, nutritionists, and community advocates have helped make Pharm Fresh something more than just a collection of greens growing in a lot once littered with broken bricks and shattered glass.
Some community organizations, like Global Center for Success, Vallejo People’s Garden, and Harmony Organics helped Pharm Fresh build momentum.
“We were recently awarded the 2019 Napa-Solano Community Benefit Grant from Kaiser Permanente,” Kim said. The group also co-launched the Touro COOKS event, provides Employee Wellness Program seminars at Kaiser and are launching DIY kits for commercial sale among various other projects.
“We believe medicine needs to shift from “sickcare” to “healthcare,” Kim said, “and agriculture needs to shift from growing calories to growing nutrients.”
Kim’s goal is to have Pharm Fresh serve as a foundation for a network of microfarms throughout the city that serve their own micro-communities while leveraging the larger network for more sustainable and consolidated overhead logistics, and they’ve been working with Sustainable Solano to build that model.
“Our hope is that this model will not only create more job opportunities by offering profit sharing, but also make the supply chain from seed to plate a more familiar, personal, and quality experience that remains . . . centered around the end consumer.”
Touro is developing a food pantry to address students who may be experiencing food insecurity during their time on campus, which Kim had input with. The parallels between the food needs of students on campus and residents in the Vallejo community are part of what drove Kim’s project.
His effort to assist the needs of students and residents alike has drawn praise.
“We are always interested in doing everything we can to ensure student success at Touro,” said Steven Jacobson, Dean of Student Affairs at Touro. “Pharm Fresh not only tackles this problem but it also demonstrates what our students are capable of with the proper encouragement and support.”
As for Kim, he’s cognizant that the seed for his own rapidly growing idea was first planted at Touro.
“The faculty at Touro is made up of some of the most forward-thinking and supportive people I’ve ever met.”
As for his own leadership, Kim doesn’t think he’s terribly different than his fellow Touro students.
“There are so many leaders and visionaries (at Touro) that are working to reimagine how certain aspects of health and medicine are being practiced or utilized.”
