WIC serves more than 50% of all infants born in the U.S. The goal of this study is to build a forecasting model to estimate national WIC funding needs under various policy and economic conditions through fiscal year 2027. The model will also be designed to allow for updates to forecast funding needs for future More
In 2022, Colorado became one of the first states in the nation to pass a universal free school meal program when Proposition FF created Colorado Healthy School Meals for All (HSMA). In May 2025, the Colorado General Assembly passed HB25-1274 to fully fund the HSMA program, which has been referred to two ballot measures in More
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
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
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
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
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
This study investigated whether demographic, social, and economic determinants of health, including length of time participating in safety net programs, are associated with diet quality and weight status in early childhood. Using the WIC infant and toddler feeding practices study-2, classification and regression tree identified the sequence of binary splits that best differentiated the sample More
In 2021 Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC), one of the largest US economic supports for working families with proven benefits for health. Information on CTC take-up among eligible families is lacking. Understanding barriers to anti-poverty programs is an urgent policy issue, as low take-up is an established barrier to health equity. Among a More
The purposes of this research were to explore the characteristics of households with children that joined SNAP after substantial changes were made to the program in the early stages of the pandemic and to learn how the changes affected food purchases. The research team used household-based scanner data to assess demographic characteristics and food purchase More
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