Our Story & Mission

Janelle Reeves-Patterson founded Georgia Food for Health in 2015 after spending eight years as a regional coordinator with Feeding America, where she managed emergency food distribution networks across the Southeast. Her fieldwork in rural Georgia communities opened her eyes to a paradox that would shape the rest of her career: Georgia is one of the nation's leading agricultural producers, yet millions of Georgians — many of them living within miles of productive farmland — cannot reliably access the fresh fruits and vegetables essential for basic health.

With a Master of Science in Nutrition Science from Emory University and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of Georgia, Janelle brought both clinical nutrition expertise and public health systems thinking to the challenge of rural food insecurity. She envisioned an organization that would go beyond traditional food banking — one that would treat food not merely as emergency sustenance but as medicine, delivering specifically tailored nutrition to families based on their health conditions, cultural food preferences, and community context.

The first Georgia Food for Health mobile pantry run happened on a Saturday morning in March 2015. Janelle drove a borrowed refrigerated van from a friend's catering company to three rural churches in Colquitt County, distributing 400 pounds of surplus peaches, sweet potatoes, and collard greens donated by two local farms. Thirty-seven families showed up. Within six months, demand had grown to the point where Janelle secured the organization's first USDA TEFAP authorization and purchased its first dedicated refrigerated box truck with seed funding from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.

Today, Janelle leads a staff of 24 full-time employees, manages partnerships with four major Georgia health systems, and oversees an annual operating budget of $2.4 million. She serves on the Georgia Food Policy Council, the Atlanta Regional Commission's Community Health Advisory Board, and the American Dietetic Association's Food Insecurity Working Group. She lives in Decatur with her husband Marcus and their two daughters.