Start Date: February 2020

ID #: 77242

Principal Investigator: Eva Wong, PhD

Organization: Public Health-Seattle & King County

Funding Round: HER Round 12

See more related research

Share


In King County, WA, food insecurity is pervasive among low-income children and inequitable by race, yet WIC utilization is also low. We propose to evaluate an innovative WIC mobile strategy to be implemented in 2020 to advance nutrition and food security equity. Mobile WIC teams will bring services to non-traditional community settings (e.g., food banks and shelters). Informed by client focus groups and piloted in 2019, this responds to client-identified needs–transportation support, food access, and housing, which have not been met by traditional implementation requiring clients to travel to WIC offices. We hypothesize that mobile WIC teams will facilitate access to and increase utilization of WIC education and food benefits, which will advance health equity by increasing food security and nutrition among clients who are disproportionately people of color. The study sample will be WIC eligible, low-income women and children in King County prior to and after implementation (>200,000 clients, 2017-2021).

Related Research

July 2026

“It’s just not worth it anymore”: A Mixed Methods Study Examining the Impact of Reinstating Reimbursement Tiers in the Child and Adult Care Food Program

This study aimed to assess impacts of the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) reinstatement of tiered reimbursements among family child care home (FCCH) providers, sponsors, and families in California. Irrespective of tier, surveyed providers reported that the reinstated, tiered reimbursements were insufficient (92.4%), resulting in reduced food variety (39.1%) and quality (14.8%), and More

July 2026

Forecasting WIC Funding Needs: Supporting Families, Strengthening Access

In partnership with Westat and with support from Healthy Eating Research, the National WIC Association (NWA) developed a new forecasting model to project funding needs of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for Fiscal Year 2027. Report This report describes the model development, including methodology, as well as analysis conducted More

May 2026

SNAP participation and the healthfulness of food purchased by households with children during the pandemic

Changes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic included emergency benefit allotments and operation waivers. Using five expenditure-based measures of the nutritional quality of food purchases, we tested whether changes in SNAP during the first year of the pandemic were associated with better nutritional quality of food purchases More