Dr. Jennifer Mooney, the Boone County District Director for the Northern Kentucky Health Department, announced a region-wide increase in WIC recipients at a meeting of the county’s local board of health Friday morning.
“We’re really making great strides in our women, infant and children’s nutrition program,” Mooney said during her presentation to the board.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, often shortened to WIC, is a federal program that provides grants to states to aid low-income mothers and children up to age 5 with nutritional education, food purchases and healthcare services. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, more than half of the infants in the country participate in WIC programs.
In an email to LINK nky, Mooney provided region-wide data on the increase of WIC recipients since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
County Recipients at Pandemic Start Current Recipients Percentage Increase Boone 2,357 3,303 40.1% Campbell 1,274 1,401 10% Grant 833 1,036 24.4% Kenton 2,699 3,524 30.6%
Mooney attributes the increase in numbers to loosened application restrictions brought on by policy changes during the pandemic.
“During the pandemic we were able to go remote,” Mooney said. “So we were able to maintain that engagement. It created a reduction of barriers to get services. Rather than having to be in person all the time, we could do remote services via telephone and then a continuation of services are able to be made.”
She also attributed the increase in numbers to the opening up of Medicaid eligibility, which automatically made people eligible for WIC. In her email, she wrote that ” we anticipate that guidelines will be changed allowing for a hybrid in WIC appointments with some needing to be done in person and others being done by phone or online.”
As for broader social or economic factors that might have contributed to the rise in participants, she couldn’t say, having only had access to the data for a short time.
To see more data related to the WIC program nation-wide, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website. You can also view eligibility requirements for WIC on the department’s eligibility page.