This report presents a comprehensive and systematic national description of food stamp nutrition education operations in FY 2004. It also provides a comparison of those operations to the standards of excellence for nutrition education developed as the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Guiding Principles, released by FNS in September 2005.
The purpose of this report is to illustrate the types and amounts of foods being prescribed within the WIC food package for each category of participants. This report does not provide information on redemption of the food prescriptions, or on actual food consumption; at this time, comprehensive data are available only on food prescriptions.
The WIC Participant and Program Characteristics (PC 2004) report summarizes demographic characteristics of WIC participants nationwide in April 2004, along with information on participant income and nutrition risk characteristics. A national estimate of breastfeeding initiation for WIC infants is included. The report also describes WIC members of migrant farm-worker families.
This is a report of the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (Food and Nutrition Board), published here by permission. It is also available on the Institute of Medicine website. In response to many concerns about the WIC food packages, FNS asked the Institute of Medicine to conduct a review of the WIC food packages.
Recently, the method used to calculate the number of individuals eligible for the WIC program was evaluated and an improved methodology was developed. These new, improved estimates provide better insight on the WIC program and should help improve the program in the future. The new estimates show that 13.5 million individuals were eligible for WIC and 7.7 million participated in WIC in 2003. This coverage rate of 57% is consistent with trends since 2000 and is similar to the coverage rate found in the Food Stamp Program.
The project is a component of ongoing FNS efforts to effectively develop administrative data collection on important issues in local level WIC staffing. This WIC Staffing Data Collection pilot project was prompted by a 2001 GAO report that: cited a range of quality of services between local WIC agencies; expressed concern that local agencies may not be able to provide adequate services; and cited a need for improved professionalism and quality of service, as well as enhanced availability of professional staff to provide direct services.
This publication is based on the WIC Infant Feeding Practices Study (WIC-IFPS) sponsored by FNS. The WIC-IFPS is a one-year longitudinal study, which describes the infant feeding practices over the first year of life among a nationally representative sample of approximately 900 mothers who participated in WIC while they were pregnant.
Charting the Course for Evaluation: How Do We Measure the Success of Nutrition Education and Promotion in Food Assistance Programs? brought together nutrition educators, traditional evaluators, market researchers, and experts at evaluation of health promotion efforts to establish a dialogue to identify and push forward the state of the art in evaluating nutrition education and promotion efforts. The conference took place on July 13 and 14, 1995 in Arlington, Virginia.
FNS asked Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., (MPR) to assess the CPS estimates in relation to alternative estimates from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects longitudinal monthly income data.