Jaclyn Lerner (lower right photo) leads a recent grocery store tour with Brookside patients and families.

Jaclyn Lerner, RDN, a community nutritionist at Brookside Community Health Center, is passionate about teaching patients and families how to make nutritious, tasty and budget-friendly choices when meal planning.

Usually, it is a conversation she has during their appointments at Brookside. These days, however, that is not the only setting. Somewhere between the produce section and frozen-food aisle of a Jamaica Plain Stop & Shop, Lerner can be found teaching patients how to interpret ingredient lists, nutrition labels and front-of-package information on common food items.

Since March, she has collaborated with the store to host educational grocery store tours for patients and families, with the goal of helping them make informed decisions about their food purchases. During the hour-long sessions, offered in both English and Spanish, Lerner maneuvers a small group through the supermarket while sharing her expertise and offering practical tips for shopping on a budget, including comparing unit prices, opting for store brands, and selecting frozen and canned produce.

“Having these discussions directly in the grocery store has advantages over the office,” Lerner said. “Patients will go down the aisles with me and say, ‘Oh, this is the product I usually get.’ We can pick it up right there and talk about prices and what keywords to look for on the packaging.”

That was the case for Brookside patient, Dorchester resident and mom of four Luz Mederos-Dorleans, who recently attended one of the family-oriented sessions with her 8-year-old daughter, Sophie.

“Just learning to look for whole grains or whole fruit in the ingredients — those were great conversations to have with my daughter, and she had great questions too. She said, ‘We see all these words, but what do they really mean?’” Mederos-Dorleans said. “It was also so helpful to learn about the advantages of buying frozen veggies. I was so tied to just getting fresh, but frozen can be just as good while being more affordable and lasting longer.”

Thanks to a $5,000 grant from food and beverage company Danone North America, participants receive a $75 grocery store gift card after completing the tour. While the incentive undoubtedly sparked strong interest initially, Lerner said the program’s continued success has been fueled by the engaging and personalized program.

“I’ve had a lot of feedback on unit price. People will say, ‘I never paid attention to that little number in the corner,’ and they really appreciate understanding how to interpret it,” Lerner said. “Another important benefit is about half of our patients speak Spanish as their primary or only language, so this is an opportunity to highlight useful terms on the packaging they might not recognize in English such as ‘whole wheat’ or ‘lean.’”

Mederos-Dorleans said she and her family were excited to apply what they learned during their next shopping trip.

“We had a blast. My daughter was really invested in learning more about different fruits like dragonfruit, which we wound up buying the other day,” Mederos-Dorleans said. “Chocolate hummus and veggies are also now a ‘cool’ thing in our home.”

While the tours will conclude after the grant funds are depleted, it is just one of the many ways the Brookside team works to dismantle health inequities and help patients achieve good health.

That commitment is part of what keeps Mederos-Dorleans and her family coming back to Brookside.

“It’s a community. It feels welcoming,” she said. “People there know our girls. I’m often looking to see what other programming is offered. It’s just been a really great experience in regard to my kids’ health and teaching them to take it seriously from an early age.”