The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act (Section 232) requires a review of the WIC food package at least every ten years to ensure that it conforms to current nutrition science, public health concerns, and cultural eating patterns. This comprehensive scientific review updates and expands upon the 2006 IOM expert report “WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change.” FNS has again asked IOM to conduct a review of the WIC Food Packages. The primary aims of this review are to: 1) Review and assess the nutritional status and food and nutritional needs of the WIC-eligible population; 2) Provide specific, scientifically-based recommendations for the WIC food packages; and 3) Ensure that the recommendations would result in WIC Food Packages that: (a) are consistent with the most recently available edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), (b) address the health and cultural needs of the widely diverse WIC participant population, and (c) can operate efficiently and be effectively administered across the Nation.
The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act (Section 232) requires a review of the WIC food package at least every ten years to ensure that it conforms to current nutrition science, public health concerns, and cultural eating patterns. This comprehensive scientific review updates and expands upon the 2006 IOM expert report “WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change.” FNS has again asked IOM to conduct a review of the WIC Food Packages. The primary aims of this review are to: 1) Review and assess the nutritional status and food and nutritional needs of the WIC-eligible population; 2) Provide specific, scientifically-based recommendations for the WIC food packages; and 3) Ensure that the recommendations would result in WIC Food Packages that: (a) are consistent with the most recently available edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), (b) address the health and cultural needs of the widely diverse WIC participant population, and (c) can operate efficiently and be effectively administered across the Nation.
The WIC Nutrition Education Study provides a nationally representative description of WIC nutrition education and includes a pilot of an impact study of WIC nutrition education on behavioral and physical activity outcomes in six sites. This two-phase study includes multiple modes of data collection from State agencies, local agencies, nutrition educators, and WIC participants. The multi-method approach includes the use of web surveys, paper-based surveys, telephone interviews, in-person focus groups and interviews, observations, and administrative data reviews to fully capture WIC nutrition education dosage, duration, and frequency of use by geographic distribution and local agency characteristics. Currently, the Phase I: Interim Report is under review and the study is collecting Phase II data.
This study is designed to provide information that will allow FNS to update WIC data reporting efforts in order to provide information to support more in-depth analyses of program management, program performance, program & participant characteristics, integrity and monitoring.
The USDA Center for Collaborative Research on WIC Nutrition Education Innovations, funded by USDA FNS supports researcher-initiated projects that demonstrate creative approaches to nutrition education for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). The Center has awarded 4 subgrants. Grantees will present their findings at a grantee conference in July 2016. Descriptions of the grants awarded are available on the web at: https://www.bcm.edu/departments/pediatrics/sections-divisions-centers/childrens-nutrition-research-center/research/wic-nutrition-education.
The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is managing a small-grants research program, funded by USDA FNS. Through a competitive process, UCLA awarded seven grants in June 2012. The two-year projects to academic researchers, in partnership with WIC agencies, focus on the role that the WIC program is playing and can play in improving nutrition in pre-conceptional and periconceptional (between pregnancies) periods. FNS and UCLA anticipate that the grants will foster future collaboration and additional outside funding, along with findings that can inform WIC program development and nutrition education nationwide. Grantees presented their findings at a grantee conference in August 2015. Descriptions of the small grants awarded are available on the web at: https://www.fns.usda.gov/ops/role-wic-program-improving-peri-conceptional-nutrition-small-grants-program.
In October 2014, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) awarded a 3-year, $1.9 M grant to Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) to establish the USDA Behavioral Economics Center for Healthy Food Choice Research (BECR Center). BECR will conduct behavioral economics research to benefit the nutrition, food security and health of all Americans, with special emphasis on facilitating food choice behaviors that would improve the diets of SNAP participants and WIC participants and promote cost-effective program operations. As part of this grant, the BECR Center has funded the development of 5 conceptual white papers that explore innovative behavioral economic approaches to improve the food cost-management of the WIC program while maintaining program participation and effectiveness in promoting improved diets. These papers will be available in Spring 2016 on the BECR website at: https://becr.sanford.duke.edu/.
The first WIC Medicaid Study, published in 1991, found that every dollar spent on WIC services to low-income pregnant women saved $1.77 to $3.13 in Med- icaid cost during the first 60 days following delivery. This study will reexamine the impacts of WIC in today’s environment. It will examine the characteristics of Medicaid births and estimate the impact of WIC on the following prenatal and birth outcomes: 1) maternal health behaviors (prenatal care adequacy, smoking, weight gain), 2) birth outcomes (birth weight, gestational age, type of delivery, breastfeeding at discharge), 3) maternal risk factors (such as gestational diabetes and hypertension), and 4) Medicaid costs (delivery and newborn costs through 60 days and one year postpartum). Building on work conducted in North Carolina, the study will also examine health utilization and outcomes for children participating in WIC.
The electronic benefits transfer (EBT) study is designed to augment findings from the 2013 WIC Vendor Management Study, which satisfies Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA) requirements. The EBT sub-study provides a unique opportunity to closely examine compliance among vendors in states with an EBT system. The findings will help inform the design of the next national Vendor Management study, at which time all States will have moved to EBT systems.
This study will examine indicators of High-Risk WIC Vendors by identifying practices from other government and non-governmental programs in identifying high-risk vendors, developing and testing a micro-simulation model using WIC EBT data to identify high-risk WIC vendors, and identifying design specifications for a national WIC fraud detection system.
