San Antonio, TX – Brighter Bites, a Houston-based nonprofit providing under-resourced families with fresh produce and nutrition education, is pleased to announce it has received a $300,000 Empowering Health grant from UnitedHealthcare to expand its programming into San Antonio. This generous funding will help serve areas with high rates of food insecurity and diet-related diseases in the San Antonio area by providing fresh produce and comprehensive nutrition education to children and families.
“Through our Empowering Health grants and local outreach efforts from UnitedHealthcare, we’re working with local organizations in the state to provide Texans with an interconnected system of clinical and social services that can produce better lifestyle outcomes and make the health system work better for everyone,” said Don Langer, CEO, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas.
Since launching its Empowering Health commitment in 2018, UnitedHealthcare has now invested more than $51 million in grants reaching more than 8 million people through partnerships with community-based organizations, like Brighter Bites, in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
“We are very grateful to be awarded this grant from UnitedHealthcare,” said Rich Dachman, CEO of Brighter Bites. “These funds along with the support of our various partners will allow us to empower more children and their families in San Antonio to make healthier food choices that will in turn enable the health and wellbeing of its community.”
Since launching in 2012, Brighter Bites has distributed more than 50 million pounds of produce and hundreds of thousands of nutrition education materials to over 500,000 individuals through schools, after school programs and summer camps in the cities in which it serves. Brighter Bites uses a simple formula for introducing healthy lifestyles to families: produce distribution, nutrition education, and a fun food experience that helps to demystify produce and show just how great it can taste.
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About Brighter Bites:
Brighter Bites is a nonprofit that creates communities of health through fresh food with the goal of changing behavior among children and their families to prevent obesity and achieve long-term health. Brighter Bites is an evidence-based, multi-component elementary school, preschool, and summer camp program that utilizes reliable access to fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, and consistent exposure to recipes and messages that feature fresh food. Since 2012, Brighter Bites has provided over 50 million pounds of produce and millions of nutrition education materials to more than 500,000 individuals (including teachers) in Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, Southwest Florida, Salinas, Los Angeles, and Bakersfield. To learn more about Brighter Bites visit www.brighterbites.org.
About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare is dedicated to helping people live healthier lives and making the health system work better for everyone by simplifying the health care experience, meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted relationships with care providers. In the United States, UnitedHealthcare offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.5 million physicians and care professionals, and more than 6,700 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide. The company also provides health benefits and delivers care to people through owned and operated health care facilities in South America. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified health care company. For more information, visit UnitedHealthcare at www.uhc.com or follow @UHC on Twitter.
