Start Date: February 2020

ID #: 77236

Principal Investigator: Hilary Seligman, MD, MAS

Organization: The Regents of the University of California, San Francisco

Funding Round: HER Round 12

See more related research

Share


Households with children ages 6 and younger are at a particularly high risk of food insecurity (14.3% food insecure). These are also the households in which new pregnancies are most likely to occur. The Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is designed to improve the health of low-income pregnant and post-partum women, infants, and children ages 5 and younger by providing financial support for nutritious food purchases and nutrition education. The extent to which food security, dietary intake, and/or birth outcomes can be improved by supplementing the existing WIC benefit with fruits and vegetables (F&Vs) remains unknown. This project will leverage WIC infrastructure and an ongoing local voucher program (EatSF) to provide $40 in F&V vouchers in addition to WIC benefits for pregnant WIC participants in San Francisco. This group will be compared to WIC participants in neighboring areas who are not receiving F&V vouchers in order to determine the impact of supplemental vouchers on reducing food insecurity, improving dietary intake, and improving birth outcomes. The goal of this project is to provide actionable evidence that can be translated into equity-focused strategies and policies for improving diet quality and food security for low-income pregnant women and infants.

Related Research

June 2022

Additional Fruit and Vegetable Vouchers for Pregnant WIC Clients: An Equity-Focused Strategy to Improve Food Security and Diet Quality

Women with low household income and from racial/ethnic minority groups are at elevated risk of food insecurity. Food insecurity during pregnancy is associated with overall less healthy diets, lower intake of the pregnancy-supportive nutrients iron and folate, and significant variations in diet across the course of a month. The goal of this study was to More

February 2025

More States and Sponsors Are Providing Grab-and-Go Meals to Children during Summer

In 2023, to respond to increased rates of child food insecurity during the summer Congress authorized states to opt in to allowing noncongregate, or “grab-and-go,” summer meal services for students in rural areas. In the summer of 2023, 46 states and DC opted in, and in the summer of 2024 all 50 states and DC More

February 2025

Consumption of the Food Groups with the Revised Benefits in the New WIC Food Package: A Scoping Review

On 18 April 2024, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published the first food package changes to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in over a decade, which reduced some food benefits (juice, milk, canned fish, and infant fruits and vegetables) and offered substitutes (cash-value vouchers (CVVs) or cash-value More