Farm to Bedside: Expanding Access to Fresh, Local Produce and Combating Food Insecurity through Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm and Stony Brook Medicine Food Farmacy

Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm grows 1,500 pounds of fresh, organic produce annually for patients and community programs. The Stony Brook Medicine (SBM) Food Farmacy provides two-week food provisions, nutrition education and referrals to food-insecure hospital patients. Together, these initiatives combat food insecurity, improve health outcomes and promote sustainability.

The Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm, located on the third-floor roof of the Health Sciences Center, is an innovative rooftop farm managed by the Nutrition Division with support from volunteers, students and interns. Each year, the farm produces approximately 1,500 pounds of fresh, organic vegetables, fruits and herbs using sustainable growing methods. This harvest helps combat food insecurity by supplying the SBM Food Farmacy, where it supplements two-week food provision bags for patients discharged from Stony Brook Hospital. In addition, the farm’s produce enhances patient meals within the hospital and supports community programs such as Stony Brook HOME and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

Since its inception in 2011, the farm has grown from 800 square feet to 2,242 square feet with 36 raised beds, creating a true farm-to-bedside model that integrates nutrition into patient care.

Stony Brook Medicine’s Food Farmacy, a collaboration between the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine and the Nutrition Division, was created to assist food-insecure hospital patients. Food and nutrition insecurity — a lack of access to nutritionally adequate foods — is a critical social determinant of health. It is linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer, and patients often face the dual burden of high medical costs and limited access to healthy food.