Mayor Mamdani’s N.Y.C. Groceries (NYCG) initiative is underway, with locations announced in East Harlem and the Bronx, and three additional sites planned for Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. According to Mamdani, the stores will put affordable “high-quality” groceries within reach of working-class and lower-income New Yorkers.

That is a worthy goal, but affordability alone does not go far enough. If NYCG is going to succeed, it should also address diet-related disease. “High-quality” food has no formal definition, but an evidence-based approach that improves access to fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, while limiting the consumption of excess sodium and refined sugar, could be transformative.

To truly serve the needs of New Yorkers, NYCG should think outside the traditional grocery model and build a fully integrated Food-as-Medicine Health & Grocery Hub, where healthcare dollars help pay for groceries and nutrition education happens within the store.

The food Americans eat is the single largest modifiable driver of the chronic disease epidemic, which costs the country $4.5 trillion annually. In New York, more than 1 in 4 residents have hypertension, an estimated 10% have diabetes, and cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death. The most economically vulnerable New Yorkers struggle to afford food while also struggling to afford healthcare and suffering from higher-than-average rates of diet-related cardiometabolic disease.

A growing body of research has demonstrated the effectiveness of Food as Medicine (FAM), a model of care sometimes described as “Food is Medicine.” This approach recognizes nutritious food and access to it as essential components of preventing and treating diet-related chronic conditions, including........

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