Rita Nguyen, MD is founder and medical director for the Food as Medicine (FAM) Collaborative which is a multi-sector collaborative that bridges healthcare and food systems to address food insecurity, support nutritional behavior change, and advance health equity. The FAM Collaborative does this through programming via Food Pharmacies in clinical spaces, systems change that empowers healthcare to approach food insecurity as a health issue, and policy change that compels insurance to cover food as a medical benefit. Food Pharmacies now operate across five health systems and 11 clinics in San Francisco County and the FAM Collaborative provides state-wide technical assistance to health systems and public health departments seeking to create similar food as medicine initiatives. The FAM Collaborative also co-led efforts to get medically supportive food and nutrition services into California’s latest Medicaid waiver, entitled CalAIM, which made it possible for food to be a covered medical benefit under California Medicaid. She has also served as medical director for healthy food initiatives for the Wellness Center at Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG) where she spearheaded several projects that emphasized the importance of food and health including the creation of a transitional meal program that delivered medically tailored meals to patients discharged from ZSFG with heart failure and championing policies that improved healthy food offerings at the hospital. She is a practicing hospitalist, assistant clinical professor at UCSF, and assistant health officer and director of population health at the California Department of Public Health. She received a BA at Stanford University, her MD at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and an Internal Medicine residency in the Primary Care track at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She completed a fellowship in Civic Innovation at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. (San Francisco, CA)