Photo courtesy of Kathleen Grasse
CareHealth delivery
Lankford decided on the name CareHealth, health care backwards, as their mission to take care of the health care teams who are on the front lines during this pandemic.
Like many others, John Lankford wanted to find a way to help others during the COVID-19 crisis.
What is unique is that Lankford’s company, the Parnassus Group, works with those in the healthcare industry, and his nonprofit, Urban Avenues, has a program called Five Loaves, in which students learn culinary skills from local chefs in the Birmingham restaurant industry.
“With our role related to healthcare and all the people we are connected to in the food world with Urban Avenues, we saw the brokenness and suffering going on on both sides,” Lankford said. “It was almost one of those prayer moments saying ‘Lord what do you want us to do with this?’”
Over several weeks in March, Lankford spent time talking to leaders across companies in healthcare about how dire things were with patients and care teams. Simultaneously, he was talking to chefs and restaurant owners and hearing how terrible things were for them. He said it was “kind of coming in all directions.”
The idea came together quickly. Within 24 hours, with help from Five Loaves Director, Madison Kerns, they had a logo and a new page on the Urban Avenues website. Lankford decided on the name CareHealth, health care backwards, as their mission to take care of the health care teams who are on the front lines during this pandemic.
Out of this need, CareHealth, another initiative of Urban Avenues, was formed. The goal is to show gratitude for the healthcare community and their commitment to serve our city by providing meals to healthcare professionals across Birmingham. By utilizing local restaurants as the food providers, resources are poured back into Birmingham’s food industry as well.
“We started a grassroots effort to get the word out through social media and started firing up donors,” Lankford said. “In the first two days, we probably raised close to $2,000, since then, we have raised another $13,000 from over 150 donors.”
Lankford said they are working with restaurants to quickly scheduling them for deliveries to hospitals around the Birmingham area. It costs $400 to feed one department, and around $800 for an ICU unit or emergency room.
CareHealth has a team of schedulers and drivers and is ramping up to do multiple meal deliveries daily. They are working with about 15 restaurant partners and intend to expand that over time. Some of the restaurants include Saw's BBQ, Little Donkey, Eugene’s Hot Chicken, Gus’ Hot Dogs, Rodney Scott’s BBQ, Dreamcakes, Hero Doughnuts and East West Kitchen Bar.
“We have had a lot of people step up in small and big ways to get this off the ground,” Lankford said. “We are trying to do everything we can to get the restaurants as much revenue as possible. The big thing is what we’re seeing is a double dividend on any donation. It makes a huge impact, by keeping the food community alive.”
Lankford said there are other organizations doing similar things to what CareHealth is doing and they are partnering with them also to make sure restaurants are given business and as many workers are getting fed as possible.
“Everybody cares about these two things: healthcare and the food industry,” he said. “The cool thing is you can help both at once.”
Donations are accepted on the CareHealth website which gets cash to Birmingham restaurants and also gets hot meals to healthcare workers. Lankford said they have a good vision of how to get through next couple of weeks, and after that, it will depend on funding.
Requests for meals can also be made on the website by departments or clinics in the Birmingham area and nominations for meals are accepted too. Also, local businesses can sign up to participate in a donation match campaign.
“This will be ongoing until the crisis is over,” Lankford said. “If other communities want to do this, we can get them started and be a partner for them throughout the process.”
For more information, visit urbanavenues.com/carehealth.