The Food, Nutrition and Conservation Act of 2008 (also known as the Farm Bill) authorized funds to pilot test and rigorously evaluate the impact of financial incentives at the point-of-sale for the purchase of fruits, vegetables or other healthful foods on the diet quality of participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program FNS refers to this effort as the Healthy Incentives Pilot or HIP. HIP operated for 14 months in Hampden County, MA.
In February, 2013, FNS published final regulations revising the definition of trafficking. It subsequently came to our attention that some states were not clear that upon its effective date, federal law takes precedence and states were expected to implement the new federal trafficking definition.
FNS is issuing a final rule to amend Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program regulations to allow state agencies to deny a request for a replacement card until contact is made by the household with the state agency, if the requests for replacement cards are determined to be excessive.
Trafficking of SNAP benefits occurs when SNAP recipients sell their benefits for cash to food retailers, often at a discount. Although trafficking does not increase costs to the federal government, it is a diversion of program benefits from their intended purpose of helping low-income families access a nutritious diet. This report, the latest in a series of periodic analyses, provides estimates of the extent of trafficking during the period 2009 through 2011.
The Healthy Incentive Pilot (HIP) is being evaluated using a rigorous research design. The overall goal of the evaluation is to assess the impact of HIP on participants’ intake of fruits and vegetables.
The Food and Nutrition Service is changing the SNAP regulations pertaining to client benefit use, participation of retail food stores and wholesale food concerns in SNAP, and SNAP client participation in the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations.
The Early Implementation Report addresses the processes involved in implementing and operating HIP, focusing on the early implementation period, from pilot inception to March 2012.