Episode 84: Everything You Want to Know about Temple University’s Farm to Families Program

Providenza Loera is committed to highlighting the systemic injustices that have prevented thousands from freely enjoying healthy food options. Her work focuses on bringing attention to health inequities and discussing realistic, community-driven solutions. Enza has made a life-long commitment as an ally to learn accurate history and work to identify, dismantle, and decolonize systems of oppression that continue to devalue and limit opportunities for growth in dense, disparate, and urban places like North Philadelphia. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when food insecurity peaked as supply chains were stressed, Enza’s training as a social worker enabled her to address nutritional scarcity and connect individuals in Philadelphia and in counties surrounding Philadelphia with food and other life-sustaining supplies including baby formula, dog food, and diapers. Enza currently serves as Assistant Director of the MA in Urban Bioethics program and is also an Assistant Professor in the Center for Urban Bioethics at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The Center for Urban Bioethics is committed to addressing and ending health disparities through education, research, and community partnerships.

By training, Enza is a social worker (MSW ‘09, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice), bioethicist (MBE ‘09, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine), and lawyer (JD ‘12, Temple University Beasley School of Law). She has the honor of teaching ethics to a variety of students at Temple including medical students, physician assistants, residents, physicians, social workers, therapists, dental residents, and dental students. She also is a lecturer at Simmons University School of Social Work and Drexel University’s Health Science Administration Program.

With over 18 years of non-profit and community-based work, Enza’s impact has been felt by individuals, communities, and organizations throughout the Philadelphia region. She spent five years as a geriatric social worker and helped to found and lead an age-in-place initiative in Wilmington, Delaware. An encounter with an older adult’s confusion about medical documents (despite the client’s signature on all of the documents indicating her physicians had obtained her consent for an upcoming procedure) inspired Enza’s academic and research focus in legal and ethical issues in end-of-life care and led her to pursue degrees in bioethics and law in order to understand better approaches to empowering individuals to have as much autonomy as possible during end-of-life planning.

Since 2017, Enza has been working with Farm to Families, a food insecurity program out of the Center for Urban Bioethics and the St. Christopher's Foundation for Children that brings organic, local fruit and vegetables to North Philly residents at low- or no-cost. In 2020, she became the program director for the Farm to Families program and manages an essential group of volunteers who assist with F2F. Since 2019, Enza has been actively involved in PHA Cares, a community-based partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority, where she leads a team of medical student volunteers, helps to create community education materials, and provides educational support to community health workers. She is also a member of the Philadelphia Consortium of Bridging the Gaps and serves as Temple’s program director; in this role she maintains community partnerships for health science, medical, nursing, occupational therapy, and pharmacy students and has also served as an academic and community preceptor. Enza is a certified national healthcare ethics consultant and serves on Temple University Hospital's Ethics Committee, as well as a variety of other committees.