School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted children’s access to school meals in 2020 and 2021. School food service authorities (SFAs), which are responsible for planning, sourcing, preparing, and serving school meals, had to rapidly convert their usual on-site meal service operations to more flexible and mobile strategies to distribute meals to students More
The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges and exacerbated existing barriers faced by SNAP participants and administrators, such as inequitable access to SNAP online purchasing, overburdened administrative staff and agency systems, and low digital literacy and technology deficits. In response, SNAP online purchasing increased rapidly by March 2021, and program flexibilities and waivers allowed states to More
In response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act authorized USDA to approve waivers, requested by WIC state agencies and Tribal Nations, which would ensure WIC benefit access for families already participating in the program, as well as newly eligible families. These waivers and flexibilities provided researchers a More
This study aimed to describe policies and practices of online grocery retailers that may affect healthy food access, including retailers participating in the US Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Online Purchasing Pilot. It used a cross-sectional, quantitative content analysis of 21 online grocery retail websites from November 2019 to January 2020. Most retailers More
This brief provides the results of an analysis of WIC vendor selection and authorization criteria, and operations and management policies established by the 89 administrative agencies in the United States. This study is the first to compile and examine a database of WIC vendor selection and authorization criteria, and operations and management policies established by More
This study aimed to assess programmatic changes made by the Washington State WIC program to offer remote services and more flexible food options, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve focus groups with 52 WIC staff (10 state, 42 local) were conducted in Dec 2020 to Feb 2021, and interviews were conducted with 40 WIC More
Using COVID-relief funds, UDSA temporarily expanded the WIC FV cash value benefit (CVB) from $9-11 to ~$35/month/person for seven months, June – December 2021. The objective of this study is to use focus groups with a diverse group of WIC participants in North Carolina to examine barriers and facilitators to utilizing the temporarily expanded CVB, More
The purpose of this study is to evaluate a novel Electronic Health Record (EHR)-based WIC referral and care coordination program. Specifically, this program refers children to WIC and provides a secure data connection for communication between health care providers and WIC team members. The specific aims are to: 1) Better understand the WIC referral gap More
This study aimed to examine the relationship between WICShopper application (app) usage and full redemption of Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food benefits in the West Virginia WIC program. With propensity score matching, the prevalence of full redemption at the household level was 7.2% for app users vs 4.7% for More
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-administered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) made substantial changes in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These changes highlight the need to identify the digital literacy skills and capacities of SNAP adults to purchase healthy groceries online. We conducted a scoping review of four electronic databases, Google More
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