2024: A Culinary Medicine Year in Review
We don’t know about you, but we still cannot believe it’s 2025! This year it feels like we’ve hit the ground running. And while we can’t wait for the future, it’s important to remember everything we accomplished in the last year. So, let’s take a little walk down memory lane and go over the highlights.
Spring 2024
Starting in the Spring approximately twice monthly throughout the entire year, we offered grocery distribution opportunities to the community of the 12th St corridor. Thanks to our partners at Potluck Food Rescue, we turned the UAMS Community Café into a pop-up farmers market available to anyone in need that lives in the area. We offered fresh produce along with extra goodies from local restaurants and grocery stores. This was one of the most rewarding projects we’ve ever taken on, and we had a blast connecting with the people that live in the neighborhood.
During the month of March, we partnered with FoodCorps and Chicot Elementary to create a series of family friendly cooking classes. Dr. Michael Thomsen and Dr. Stephanie Lopez-Neyman from the UAMS College of Public Health both played an integral role in the success of this series. The idea was to incorporate every family member in the dinner making process for an inclusive atmosphere, and also to mimic a family dinner night. For instance, the older kids and adults cooked up some nutritious meals in the kitchen, while the younger kids used their creative abilities to set the table and produce a nice ambience for the dining experience.
In April we always like to participate in the annual UAMS Be a Part of the Cure Walk, and this year was no exception. We set up a booth and chatted with all different types of community members (both young and old) about nutritional education and cooking. We love the walk because it’s an excellent opportunity to get the word out about our passion and what we do.
Summer 2024
The summer brought on the heat in the kitchen. The UAMS Pathways Academy’s Ramp-Up students joined us to make delectable culinary creations and talk nutrition during one of our teaching kitchen experiences. The Ramp-Up program is uniquely geared towards high school age scholars who are interested in a career in the health and medical field. Kids always bring a different energy into the kitchen, and it’s refreshing and fun.
We were fortunate enough to be able to send one of our team members to the Health Meets Food Conference which took place during June in Colorado. Dr. Gina Drobena, our Program Director, represented our team at the conference. “The best part of the experience has been talking to other people who are just as passionate as we are about using food as medicine and leveraging the teaching kitchen as a tool to improve health and health education,” is what Dr. Drobena said about her conference experience. She came back with some innovative ideas to make our Teaching Kitchens the most enjoyable, efficient, and environmental as possible.
Fall and Winter 2024
We were honored to be a featured unit during this year’s UAMS Day of Giving. On October 10, Channel 7 came to our Cooking with Parkinson’s Class to highlight our program and emphasize the importance of supporting such a transformative health program. Alyssa Frisby was interviewed and did an excellent job explaining exactly what a donation means to Culinary Medicine. We were so grateful for the opportunity to be noticed and amazed by the generosity of the citizens of Little Rock. Thanks to these wonderful people we can offer better equipment, education, and experiences to the students at UAMS, thus truly impacting the future of our state’s health.
Also in the Fall, we had the honor of receiving our fourth Chancellor’s Circle Grant at the Clinton Presidential Center. Again, we are so grateful that we get to continue to expand our programming and offer free classes to students, faculty, and staff.
We wrapped up the year with a small Holiday gathering to celebrate all the hard work we did throughout the year. Our team believes it’s important to take time to be mindful and appreciate the wins, and we did so in style with deliciously mouthwatering treats and beverages.
Well, that’s a wrap on the highlight reel! It’s worth mentioning that while those events were being planned and taking place, our regularly scheduled programming remained the same. All the usual suspects including our Cooking with Parkinson’s Class, GME Wellness Workshops, OBGYN Teaching Kitchens, Geriatric Teaching Kitchens, and Get Healthy UAMS Teaching Kitchens for faculty, students, and staff continued as normal.
In 2025, we are hopeful to become integrated into more departmental curriculums and look forward to interacting with patients more frequently. All in all, we had a fantastically productive 2024 and can’t wait to do it all again and then some. Here’s to the future and another extraordinary year!
