Focus Area: Nutrition Policy & Programs

“I Didn’t Have to Struggle”: Caregivers’ Perspectives on the Synergistic Interplay of WIC and SNAP on Family Health

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This study explored how increased Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits interacted for dually enrolled households. Twenty-five parents dually enrolled in WIC and SNAP in the spring of 2020 shared perceptions of expanded benefits and reduced administrative requirements via semistructured interviews. Specifically, parents shared More

Policy Priorities and Research Needs for Advancing Healthy Eating: A 2026-2027 Research Agenda for U.S. Children and Adolescents

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Given recent changes to nutrition policies and programs and the food environment landscape, the need for new evidence on how these changes impact nutrition, health, and food access is greater than ever. HER has also published a research agenda intended to provide a blueprint for immediate (i.e., 12-18 month) research needs to inform strategies to More

Informing equitable implementation of SNAP food restriction waivers

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SNAP is the largest federally funded nutrition assistance program in the U.S., providing support to more than 40 million Americans. This study aims to provide tangible information, insights, and resources grounded in SNAP participants’ preferences and feedback to support the implementation and communication of SNAP Food Restriction waivers, minimizing barriers to SNAP participation and benefit More

Building a National Research Agenda

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Long-Term Research Agenda The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) commitment to child obesity ends in December 2025, marking the conclusion of a two-decade investment in Healthy Eating Research (HER). As part of our RWJF legacy, HER is developing a national research agenda for policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) interventions and strategies to promote food and More

The Current State of Knowledge on SNAP Restrictions and Disincentives

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Little is known about the impacts of SNAP restrictions on the health of program participants. This brief provides a narrative review of published evidence on SNAP restrictions and combined incentive-disincentive approaches, highlighting the approaches’ historical context, perceptions among program participants, and evidence of impact on SNAP participants’ purchases and health. The studies reviewed found mixed More

Food Insecurity-Related Stigma Among Adults in the United States: A Scoping Review

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This review aimed to characterize individual- and structural-level stigma associated with utilization of government (i.e., SNAP, WIC) and emergency food programs (i.e., food banks, pantries, cupboards, soup kitchens) in the U.S. The review included original peer-reviewed articles or systematic reviews published between January 2004 – June 2024, in the U.S., in English. Included studies reported More

Lived Experiences of Families Navigating Safety Net Expansions and Retractions During the Pandemic: A Qualitative Study

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This study aimed to understand the experiences of families with low income in California with pandemic safety net support expansions and retractions, including barriers to program access. Using open-ended questions, we explored the self-reported experiences of pandemic-era safety net expansions and expirations between January and June 2023 among a group of caregivers of young children More

The association between food benefit online ordering and redemptions: evidence from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children

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This study aimed to examine how the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) online food benefit ordering could influence WIC benefit redemptions, comparing the average redemption rates between online ordering early adopters and non-adopters among WIC customers before and after implementing WIC online ordering. A propensity score-weighted difference-in-difference model was used More