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Press Release

The Dohmen Company Foundation Partners with Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative to Launch Community Food for Health Program

Program Participants Receive 14 Meals Per Week as a Preventive Health Intervention

By Kathy Koshgarian

Milwaukee, WI. May 12th, 2020 – CEO Cynthia (Dohmen) LaConte announced today that The Dohmen Company Foundation has partnered with Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative (CGHC) to launch a program which will supply 14 free meals per week to 100 CGHC members in need throughout Milwaukee. This early phase rollout seeks to address some of the urgent community need for food triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic while advancing the foundation’s longer term mission to revitalize the health of communities and the people within them through the power of food.

“Dohmen has been busy over the last year building out a company that will offer food as a health benefit, but when COVID-19 hit, it was clear we had to pivot quickly and redeploy resources in support of the urgent community food requirements that were unfolding.” said Dohmen Company Foundation President Dale Mittelstaedt. “When the pandemic was declared, we quickly reached out to the great folks at CGHC to partner on a Food for Health program that would supply free meals to some of their members most in need.”

Dohmen’s Food for Health program will initially deliver 14 meals a week to 100 participants at no charge for six weeks. In addition to the meals, Dohmen has also supplied free health monitoring material like blood pressure monitoring devices, scales and health applications to allow participants to track their health goals and progress against them.

“Dohmen created the Food for Health Program because we know that eating the right food is the single most powerful intervention available to prevent and reverse chronic disease, the very diseases that put Americans at far greater risk for severe illness like COVID-19,” said Cynthia LaConte, CEO of the Dohmen Company. “We saw this program launch with CGHC as a unique opportunity to meet the immediate needs of our community while still advancing our long term goals of closing the health equity gap and lowering healthcare costs.”

“We’re delighted to partner with the Dohmen Company Foundation, another not for profit organization, on their pilot Food for Health program” said Cathy Mahaffey, CEO of Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative. “CGHC is a health insurance cooperative that is driven to be more responsive to the needs of individuals and small employers, so when Dohmen approached us with a way to bring some short term relief in the form of healthful meals to some of our members, we quickly accepted and advanced the opportunity.”

About Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative
Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative is a non-profit, member-governed health insurer based in Brookfield, Wisconsin serving more than 54,000 members in 20 Wisconsin counties. CGHC is the health insurance solution for thousands of small businesses, nonprofits, individuals and families throughout eastern Wisconsin. As a nonprofit cooperative focused on putting members first, CGHC is dedicated to delivering quality, comprehensive health insurance at the very best value to its members. For more information visit commongroundhealthcare.org.

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