LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — A new study shows participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) declined across the country during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have found what they’re calling a significant decline in WIC participation during the public health emergency.
The research team, led by student-researcher and UAMS College of Medicine student Savannah Busch, measured changes in participation among more than 10 million Medicaid-covered births across the U.S. between 2016 and 2022. During that period, they found that participation in WIC went from 66.6% to 57.9%.
Their research also showed even greater reductions in the program’s participation among people of minority races and ethnicity.
“WIC services have been consistently shown to improve infant outcomes at birth, as well as throughout infancy, while providing other maternal health benefits,” said researcher Clare Brown, Ph.D., MPH, an assistant professor in the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health. “Anything that suggests reduced utilization of WIC for those who may need WIC services is a bad thing, and we found that the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the use of WIC services overall, and there were even larger reductions for individuals of minority races or ethnicities.”
Brown added that Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander groups saw one of the greatest relative declines in WIC participation over the study’s six-year period. This is a critical finding for mothers in Arkansas — a state that was recently ranked worst in the nation for maternal mortality and given the state’s large population of Marshallese mothers.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services, WIC provides “supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age 5 who are found to be at a nutritional risk.”
For more information about WIC, click here.