WIC provides needed supplemental nutrition and health care access for families, ensuring that children have safe and supportive environments to develop.
This is a trend that existed before the pandemic, and will likely continue if proper measures to simplify the receipt and use of program benefits are not undertaken nationally. To that extent, it has both demonstrated great impact, but also great disappointment, as only about half of all eligible recipients are currently enrolled (Badaracco 2020). As a policy reform, WIC seeks to provide nutrition and health benefits to highly targeted categories of individuals. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, is an example of one such policy. Often, the conversation around government benefits and assistance fluctuates between concerns about providing for those we deem “deserving,” while locking out those whom we believe are not. Employment and economic crises, brought on by the COVID-19 public health emergency, have forced all of us to stop and ponder the ease (or lack thereof) with which we are able to access the government resources we need to care for ourselves and our loved ones. In order to more efficiently and effectively administer WIC, a national push to streamline service provision, especially towards online formats, and to continue to accept flexible eligibility documentation, is recommended.įor almost two years, American citizens have watched the underground complexities of poverty in our country come to light. COVID-19-related adjustments and individual states’ innovations have lessened the specificity of the program’s food choices, loosened application requirements, and eliminated barriers to in-person meetings associated with the program, although challenges associated with online access and rural locations persist. We employ the administrative burdens framework to better understand why participation is lacking, and often challenging for enrollees, assessing learning, compliance, and psychological costs. Isha Arora, Louisa Sholar, and Kathryn VaughnĪbstract: Designed to provide benefits to highly targeted categories of individuals, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, has demonstrated great impact in the health benefits it delivers to program participants, but also great disappointment in low national levels of uptake and redemption. Redeeming WIC Benefits: An Analysis of Administrative Burdens and Opportunities for Burden Reduction
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