Hospital

Bloomberg to Fund Meals for NYC Health+Hospitals

NEW YORK — Bloomberg Philanthropies is teaming with World Central Kitchen to provide fresh daily meals for the 30,000 healthcare workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic at NYC Health + Hospitals’ 11 acute care hospitals and five post-acute long-term care facilities across the city’s five boroughs. Mike Bloomberg’s $6 million gift makes it possible for World Central Kitchen to begin food service operations starting on April 15 at two locations, and go live across all NYC Health + Hospitals facilities by Monday, April 27.

The collaboration will feed all NYC Health + Hospitals hospital, acute, and post-acute care staff plus additional personnel who have joined their ranks at these facilities, regardless of their department, discipline, or tour, seven days a week, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. from a uniquely designed grab-and-go “cafeteria.”  World Central Kitchen and NYC Health + Hospitals have strategized a variety of internal and external set-ups tailored to each individual facility’s needs, ensuring that the highest safety standards are met, frontline workers experience little to no wait for meal dissemination, and that food is available to staff who work overnight shifts. The partnership aims to also meet workers’ dietary restrictions with as little burden as possible.

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest public health care system in the nation serving more than a million New Yorkers annually and has 42,000 employees.

“As the coronavirus sweeps across the world, health care workers are risking their lives every day to protect ours — and they need our support now more than ever,” said Michael Bloomberg, Founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg LP, and three-term mayor of New York City. “Here in New York, we’re glad to be teaming up with Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen to provide daily meals to everyone working so hard at 16 of the city’s public hospitals and long-term care facilities run by the NYC Health + Hospitals system. It’s a way for our team at Bloomberg Philanthropies to express our deep appreciation for them — and to help them keep saving lives and battling this disease.”

World Central Kitchen, the international not-for-profit organization founded by chef José Andrés, uses the power of food to heal and strengthen communities in times of crisis. Through its #ChefsForAmerica response to the coronavirus crisis, they are distributing 50,000 meals a day to people in need in the BronxQueens, Harlem, Brooklyn and New Jersey. Through their partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, World Central Kitchen will increase production at their meal distribution center at Hudson Yards and establish contracts with local vendors and restaurants to assist in providing thousands of additional fresh meals for the NYC Health + Hospitals staff. This will allow some local restaurants to bring back employees and start to revive the ailing NYC restaurant industry. World Central Kitchen has also distributed more than one million fresh meals to families, seniors, and frontline workers in 65 cities in 20 U.S. states and territories, as well as five cities in Spain.

“In this moment of profound need, World Central Kitchen’s team of food first responders is honored and grateful to be able to work together on this expanded response with the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies,” said Nate Mook, CEO of World Central Kitchen. “We know that together we are sharing so much more than just meals, but also hope, dignity, and nourishment for the future. It really instills these brave and tireless workers with the knowledge that we – the people of New York, and of America – are with them.”

The Bloomberg Philanthropies and World Central Kitchen partnership will help ensure that critical frontline NYC Health + Hospitals workers have a steady supply of fresh food easily accessible while they continue to deliver high quality care to New Yorkers.