Through the American Rescue Plan Act, USDA received waiver authority to support WIC and FMNP outreach, innovation, and modernization. Waivers are currently available to support WIC online shopping and ARPA-funded projects.
Each year FNS announces the WIC Breastfeeding Award of Excellence program awardees.
The 2026 application period opens on Dec. 1, 2025 and closes on Feb. 2, 2026.
Many families rely on infant formula to feed their babies. Infant formula can provide important nutrients for your baby’s growth and development. Some FNS programs – including CACFP, SNAP, and WIC – provide access to formula to support healthy infant development. USDA is committed to ensuring that FNS program participants always have access to the formula they need.
Research has shown that the WIC program has been playing an important role in improving birth outcomes and containing health care costs.
As part of the WIC innovation and modernization efforts to be funded under ARPA, FNS is supporting planning and implementation projects focused on enhancements that improve the WIC participant experience, as evidenced by enhancing the WIC shopping experience, increasing participant enrollment, reducing unnecessary administrative burden for both participants and administrators, including through data matching to streamline enrollment, and retaining eligible participants while improving equity
This policy memorandum provides guidance to improve outreach and streamline certification in WIC. It outlines current flexibilities and new policy for certification documentation options and aims to reduce WIC staff and participant burden.
This policy memorandum provides guidance on data sharing activities that support targeted outreach and streamlined certification processes aimed at increasing WIC participation and retention. It expresses USDA FNS support of data sharing, provides an overview of data sharing relevant to WIC, summarizes WIC program guidance on sharing confidential WIC participant data, and lays the groundwork for future guidance and resources to help WIC state agencies expand outreach and streamline the
certification process.
USDA proposes to remove barriers to online ordering and internet-based transactions in WIC through this rulemaking.
USDA proposed rule to streamline and modernize WIC and offer online shopping to participants. The proposed changes aim to ease stores’ administrative requirements, creates state positions to improve customer experience. Questions and answers regarding the proposed rule can be found on this page.