Food insecurity puts people at risk for many poor physical and mental health outcomes. Food insecurity stayed stable during much of the COVID-19 pandemic but rose significantly from 2021-2022 among U.S. households with children. Many federal supports were offered during the COVID-19 pandemic. These included expansions in food assistance programs like SNAP, as well as More
Keywords: COVID-19, Supportive family policies
Date: January 2024
Resource Type: Research Brief
Focus Areas: Diet Quality & Healthy Weight Food Access
Summer EBT and non-congregate meals are summer meal options that have known associations with reducing food hardship and barriers to food access. But take-up can vary across states, which creates disparities among marginalized populations. The study aims to analyze the coverage, take-up, and implementation decisions made around Summer EBT and non-congregate meals. The research team More
Keywords: School meal programs
Date: November 2023
Resource Type: Grant Summary
Focus Areas: Nutrition Policy & Programs School & After School
To address ongoing concerns of child poverty across the United States, states have introduced and modified family economic security policies related to the state minimum wage (MW) and state earned income tax credit (EITC). While poor nutritional health disproportionately impacts children who experience poverty, few studies have examined the potentially beneficial effects of state-level MW More
Keywords: Food insecurity, Supportive family policies
Date: November 2023
Resource Type: Grant Summary
Focus Areas: Diet Quality & Healthy Weight Food Access Pricing & Economics
By providing resources to low-income families with children, the safety net has the potential to reduce food insecurity and improve nutrition. Understanding how much, how, and for whom the safety net impacts food security is a critical input into active policy discussions about the best way to support children in low-income families. The project will More
Keywords: Food insecurity, Supportive family policies
The successful implementation of nutrition standards in the charitable food system can have a positive impact on the health of vulnerable populations at high risk for nutrition-related health disparities. However, there is considerable variability in the level of implementation of the Healthy Eating Research Guidelines for the Charitable Food System (HER Guidelines) in food banks, More
Keywords: Nutrition standards
Growing evidence suggests free school meal policies improve student health outcomes and nutrition equity. A key barrier to passage of these policies is concerns regarding potential costs, thus, a broader value for money evaluation is essential to inform policy decisions. This study aims to compare ‘intervention’ states with free school meal policies (i.e., universal free More
Keywords: School meal programs
Increasing participation in school meals could reduce food insecurity and improve dietary quality, especially for low-income children, but low-cost, scalable strategies for increasing participation in school meals have not yet been identified or evaluated. This study will design and rigorously evaluate a marketing campaign to encourage participation in school meals. The study has three aims: More
Keywords: School meal programs
Food insecurity is linked to a multitude of adverse health outcomes in adults and children. Yet, access to Medicaid has been shown to reduce such adverse health outcomes, and therefore, the ability to access medical care, specifically via Medicaid, is conceivably a driving factor behind the association between food hardship and adverse health. This study More
Date: November 2023
Resource Type: Grant Summary
Focus Areas: Food Access Nutrition Policy & Programs
Although consumers used online grocery shopping more frequently to limit exposure to the COVID-19 virus during the pandemic, the participants of some federal nutrition assistance programs lacked the option to redeem their food benefits online. Some retailers were pilot-testing online food benefit ordering for the participants of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, More
Keywords: COVID-19, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
Date: November 2023
Resource Type: Journal Article
Focus Areas: Food Retail Nutrition Policy & Programs
The goal of this report is to make recommendations for policy, voluntary actions, and research areas to support in-store and online food environments that make healthy food and beverage choices easier for all consumers. All shoppers face barriers to purchasing nutritious food in a retail environment that disproportionately promotes unhealthy food products. However, retail marketing More