Our Staff
Steven Chen, MD, Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Steven Chen is Chief Medical Officer of Alameda County Recipe4Health, an award winning “food as medicine” model that intentionally brings together health care, food systems, and agriculture to improve food/nutrition insecurity, chronic conditions, and health/racial equity. While leading the scale and spread of Recipe4Health (R4H), Dr. Chen and his team successfully implemented one of California’s first Medically Supportive Food and Nutrition services as a covered Medi-Cal (Medicaid) service in California.
His experiences as a son of immigrants and a 2nd generation Taiwanese American have informed his commitments to better serve vulnerable populations. He developed integrative medicine services to offer acupuncture and osteopathic manipulative medicine services in Federally Qualified Health Centers. As a former Medical Director at Alameda Health System trained in LEAN process improvement, he led the design of a state-of-the-art clinic replete with a teaching kitchen, group rooms to support group medical visits, and pod based care teams.
Dr. Chen serves on the Board of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved (IM4US), is active on California’s Medically Supportive Food and Nutrition Steering Committee, has helped craft three bills for the California legislature, and has given testimony to the U.S. Congressional House Rules Committee Roundtable on Food as Medicine.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University and Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Chen is a board-certified family medicine physician who completed his residency training at UCSF-San Francisco General Hospital. He completed additional fellowship training at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, leadership training through the California Health Care Foundation’s Leadership Program, acupuncture training through the UCLA-HMI Physicians’ Medical Acupuncture program, and advanced training in osteopathic manipulative medicine.
Anna Clayton, Health Care Program Manager
Anna Clayton, MPH serves as the Health Care Program Manager for Recipe4Health Alameda County. She has over 10 years of experience working in healthcare and public health and is committed to improving health and racial equity.
Prior to joining Alameda County, Anna coordinated Health Programs in San Francisco County and the California Department of Public Health. Her areas of focus have included nutrition, oral health, maternal, child and adolescent health, infectious disease and immunization. She has experience with community assessment, Trauma Informed Systems (TIS), Quality Improvement (QI)/LEAN principles, data analysis and public health program planning and evaluation. Anna also has trained in organic agriculture and ecological horticulture and has a passion for gardening and nutrition and its intersections with health and well-being.
Anna received her BA in Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz and a Master’s in Public Health, Community Health Education from San Francisco State University.
Zalak Trivedi, MS, RDN, CDES, Health Care Program Specialist
Zalak Trivedi is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), a Certified Diabetes Care & Education Specialist (CDCES), and a compassionate and versatile nutrition professional with extensive clinical, research, policy and teaching experience. Having worked at the front lines of healthcare as an RDN/CDCES for more than 10 years at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the outpatient setting, she has experienced firsthand how lack of access to healthy foods has led to many chronic diseases in the underserved patient population of the Alameda County. Hence, the mission of Recipe4Health is closely aligned with her core values of prevention and food equity.
In Zalak’s prior role at Hayward Wellness Center, a member of Alameda Health System, she provided evidence-based and culturally competent nutrition care to the patients across the lifespan using Medical Nutrition Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Diabetes Standards of Care to improve health outcomes. She was simultaneously an essential member of the team, led by Dr. Steven Chen, responsible for conception, co-creation, implementation, and continuous evolution of the Food As Medicine (FAM) Program, a blueprint that eventually led to the development of the Recipe4Health program at the Alameda County.
Zalak possesses a Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular & Cell Biology from University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s Degree in Human Nutrition from Columbia University’s Institute for Human Nutrition. She completed her Dietetic Internship at San Francisco State University, where she is now an annual Guest Lecturer on Motivation Interviewing. Additionally, Zalak has been volunteering for over a decade as a Legislative Ambassador for the California Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics lobbying local & federal lawmakers on a variety of nutrition topics. In fall 2023, she also became a Public Policy Chair on the executive board of the Bay Area District Dietetic Association.
Eric Sovish, CalAIM Coordinator
Eric Sovish is the CalAIM Coordinator for Recipe4Health Alameda County. Eric has over 18 years of experience in healthcare, primarily in project management and operations.
Prior to joining Alameda County, Eric served in several administrative roles at Kaiser Permanente including project management and consulting on clinical, compliance and labor related projects. For 8 years he was instrumental in the operational management of Kaiser Permanente’s online health coaching offering.
Eric received his B.A from UC Berkeley, MBA from the University of San Francisco, and MPA from Columbia University.
Our Story
In 2017, ALL IN Alameda County (ALL IN), which was spearheaded by Supervisor Wilma Chan and adopted as an initiative of the Board designed to address issues at the intersection of poverty and health, launched a series of food as medicine pilot programs intended to address these high levels of food and nutrition insecurity and chronic health conditions. Following the success of these pilot programs, ALL IN created the Recipe4Health (R4H) program in 2019 to provide medically supportive foods to low-income residents experiencing food insecurity and/or are diagnosed with, or at risk of developing, nutrition-responsive chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, heart disease, and many others. As of July 1, 2022, Recipe4Health was transferred to Alameda County Health to ensure support and alignment of its current programs with other services.
Our Partners
in honor of the late supervisor wilma chan
Recipe4Health reflects Supervisor Chan’s vision of a County without poverty where everyone thrives in healthy, vibrant, and resilient communities.
