Tenet Healthcare fights food insecurity through annual collaborative cereal drive

Across Tenet Healthcare’s ambulatory surgery centers, acute care hospitals, and corporate offices, team members partnered together to fight food insecurity and hunger in their communities through their annual Healthy Over Hungry® (HOH) Cereal Drive. This year, the company collected more than 1.1 million servings of cereal from food and monetary donations, benefitting more than 55 food banks and pantries across the United States.

The HOH Cereal Drive was founded by Pam Taurence, a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. Pam and her fellow nurses noticed that many of their youngest patients were losing access to school-based nutrition programs during the summer months, so they rallied the local community to support children and families struggling with food insecurity. Out of that collaboration, Tenet’s annual cereal drive initiative was born.

The program has since been expanded company-wide, in turn, impacting food banks and distribution centers across the country. Since 2014, through collective efforts, more than 20 million servings of cereal have been donated, and over $1.2 million raised. Teams across Tenet selected local food bank beneficiaries to receive the donations and partnered to fight hunger on a local level. Team members collect healthy, non-perishable cereals, shelf-stable milk, and monetary donations over the course of one week. In 2023, the company once again donated well over a million servings of cereal.