Dietitian Zena Harrison stands with food collected for a 2021 holiday giveaway at HUP Cedar.
Helping those with food insecurity has been a part of life for Zena Harrison, MA, RD, LD, ever since she was a child, when she’d serve holiday meals at shelters and nursing homes with her parents and other members of their church in Wayne, Pa.
That commitment continued when Harrison joined Mercy Philadelphia Hospital — now HUP Cedar —as a clinical dietitian in 2016. For three years, before the pandemic paused its work, Harrison chaired the West Philadelphia community hospital’s Shelter Committee. Partnering with the Community Action Agency of Delaware County from 2017 to 2020, she and colleagues throughout the hospital helped provide bimonthly dinners at the Life Center of Eastern Delaware County, loading their cars with meals and serving them to the residents. At one point, 250 people were coming each night to receive a hot meal. Harrison also organized fundraisers for the Life Center. “One Friday, we raised close to $1,100 just by selling baked goods that were donated from a local bakery,” she said. “Mercy may have been small, but the heart of Mercy was big.”
In her clinical work, Harrison knows that nutritional advice means little to patients who don’t have adequate food. If someone tells her they rarely eat three meals a day, she makes an effort to show no judgment, asking them if that’s due to lack of appetite or access.
“I don’t want anyone to ever feel that I am looking down on them. Having adequate food and clean water is a necessity, and if that’s not met, I can’t expect a patient to leave here and calorie count or look at a food label to check the amount of sodium,” Harrison said.
“If you’re hungry, even if the food has way too much sodium or sugar, your primary need is to solve that hunger pain. So I try to base my dietary recommendations on what is the most nutritionally dense option that they have access to and encourage them to choose those items when available.” She often refers patients with food insecurity to the Social Work team to see if they qualify for meal programs such as Mom’s Meals, MANNA, or Meals on Wheels.
Before COVID, the hospital also provided vouchers for senior citizens to get discounted meals in the cafeteria and offered monthly Saturday afternoon Luncheons, “Dine with the Docs,” where people in the community could have a healthy lunch while also learning about a health condition like heart failure or stroke. As Harrison is quick to point, she has never been alone in her efforts to fight hunger at Cedar. She keeps an African proverb on her desk at home that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
After Mercy became HUP Cedar in the spring of 2021, anchoring the PHMC Public Health Campus on Cedar, Harrison and her manager at the time joined discussions with Sofia Carreno, MSN, HUP’s nursing professional development specialist for community engagement, about bringing the HUP food pantry to the Cedar community. This planning is still underway.
“Zena’s dedication, enthusiasm, and passion for ensuring that the Cedar community has the resources it needs when it comes to food insecurity are evident,” Carreno said. “She knows that making sure her patients have access to food and having the necessary nutrients for their conditions and recovery go hand in hand. She sees that full picture when it comes to her patients.”
Last fall, Harrison partnered with Carreno to coordinate a Thanksgiving food giveaway at Cedar for both employees and patients in need, which led to an ongoing holiday food drive between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Harrison was able to give out more than 60 bags of food, thanks to the generous donations of food and money from staff who were excited to participate, the way the Mercy staff had always shown up for shelter food drives in the past.
HUP Cedar continues to receive some food donations at its drop-off point (on the ground floor by the C elevators), but Harrison is looking forward to the day that Cedar has a permanent food pantry. “I would desire for patients to have a place to receive food, non-perishable food to assist them with getting through difficult times,” she said. “We want to end people going to bed hungry.”