History
Healing Harvest began its life as the Dartmouth Cancer Center (DCC) Food Pantry. The program was founded by Catherine Reed, an oncology social worker. Catherine noticed that many of the patients she worked with were showing up to treatment on an empty stomach because they struggled with food insecurity. She began stockpiling canned goods at her desk to offer to patients and eventually secured funding to establish the DCC Food Pantry in 2022. We’ve come a long way in just a few years, but, thanks to the hard work and patient advocacy of providers like Catherine, Healing Harvest continues to thrive.
Cancer treatment is exhausting. When patients are done with appointments, they’re often too tired to go to a grocery store or a food pantry in their community, and they often don’t have money for food or gas to get there.
Catherine M. Reed, MSW, Continuing Care Manager
Meet the team
Julia Boger-Hawkins (Jules) came to DCC from a career in food justice, bringing with her a passion for sharing fresh, local food. She has worked with farms, food pantries, and community kitchens around the Upper Valley, and feels very lucky to know many of the people and organizations that support Healing Harvest.
Volunteers
Our ever-growing crew of volunteers is truly the heart and soul of Healing Harvest. They bring a wide set of skills from careers such as nurses, teachers, tech gurus, and more. Many volunteers are cancer survivors themselves, and virtually all have seen a loved one go through treatment. Healing Harvest volunteers care deeply about our patients; their empathy and drive to serve are evident in everything they do.
Fellowships
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center is a teaching hospital, and Healing Harvest provides multiple learning opportunities. We are one of only a handful of cancer centers in the country that provide food support to patients, but we still have a lot to learn as the field develops. To this end, our Medical Student Schweitzer Fellows and Dartmouth Undergraduate Fellows undertake year-long self-directed projects to research Healing Harvest and test out different ways of improving our services.