'Preventive Food Pantry'

Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, N.H., the state’s biggest city and a former textile mill town (famous for the gigantic Amoskeag Mill, on the Merrimack River; see below). A lot of tech and other business has migrated to Manchester from Greater Boston, of which Manchester and Nashua are now parts.

From The New England Council

Catholic Medical Center recently launched a Preventive Food Pantry for its patients. While programs like this one are growing in nationwide popularity, CMC is the first hospital in New Hampshire to launch such an initiative.

The program is intended to serve patients identified by social workers and nutritionists as having chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity by providing them with wholesome foods and nutrition counseling. It will also bridge the gap between physicians, nutritionists, and patients. Upon receiving their prescription, patients will visit the Parish of the Transfiguration Food Pantry to check in with volunteer nurses and then collect their boxes of healthy food. Instrumental contributors to the program include the Bishop’s Charitable Assistance Fund, who provided an initial donation to assist with startup costs, as well as the New Hampshire Food Bank, who will supply the food.

The Amoskeag Manufacturing Co’s mills, on the Merrimack, in 1911. Most of the structures are still there, put to a wide variety of uses. At its height, Amoskeag was the largest cotton textile factory in the world.