Child Nutrition and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
Introduction
WIC refers to a special supplemental nutrition program that provides nutrition rich foods, healthy eating counseling services, support on breastfeeding as well as referrals to health care. These services are given to millions of women with low incomes, infants as well as children experiencing risks associated with nutrition. WIC program aims at ensuring every expectant woman get the food they require for them to deliver healthy babies. Such foods include whole grain bread, infant formulas, milk as well as coupons for purchasing perishables such as fruits and vegetables. This also ensures that the babies are nourished nutritionally throughout their growth. This program also contributes towards the improvement of infant feeding habits therefore reducing the cases of anemia significantly hence promoting a preventive oriented healthcare (Pollitt & Oh, 1994).
This program is funded through appropriation processes per year by the federal government. In this case, states do not take part in contribution for these funds. Since the late 1990s, Congress through a two-party basis has sufficiently funded the program to meet the needs of eligible participants by providing about $ 7 billion per year. Approximately 8% of the amount goes into administrative costs. 15% covers the breastfeeding, nutritional costs, and other services. 23% discounts for the infant formulas at the manufacturers and 54% accounts for the food costs by the federal government (Chamberlin et al., 2002).
My Proposal
Committee WIC program include: House Appropriations Committee; Hal Rogers and Rep. Nita Lowey ; Senate Appropriations Committee Thad Cochran and Barbara Mikulski; House Budget Committee Tom Price and Chris Van Hollen; Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions and Bernie Sanders; House Agriculture Committee Mike Conaway and Collin Peterson (Gundersen & Ver Ploeg, 2015).
Challenges such as cases of fraud & abuse, use of obsolete data sets/no data set at all in the estimation of nutritional risk requirements of an applicant as well as current techniques employed for estimation fail. The failure is that they do not take into account the fact that some states raised their cut off Medicaid’s for infants, thus raising eligibility. This, therefore, shuts out poor children who would otherwise benefit from WIC program. Because of these shortcomings, there is need to address keenly the issues affecting the WIC health policy, as it does pay attention to the needs of our children. From a scientific viewpoint, carry out randomized experiments out using the participants along with control group (Morshed et al., 2015). This aims to carry out an evaluation of the effectiveness of the program hence identification of gaps for improvement by minimizing “selection bias” in the findings. The impact of Medicaid program in the estimation of eligible applicants has the possibility of expanding the state Medicaid program to cover infants only when streamlining of the administrative issues occurs.
I also propose that stringent rules and regulations put in place to boost the integrity of the program. This includes limiting the number of vendors authorized as well as eliminating conflicts of interest, making it easy to monitor as well as tracking incidences of fraud and abuse.
Eligibility
Some persons are eligible for the services offered by the WIC program. These persons include; expectant mothers, postnatal, women who are breastfeeding, infants as well as children of up to 5 years of age. This is only applicable if these groups meet the income guidelines put in place as well as they have been identified to be at nutritional risk. According to statistics, a larger number of applicants who meet these guidelines have a medical or dietary condition for example anemia that predisposes them to nutritional risks (Chamberlin et al., 2002).
Additionally, women who have just given birth and meet the criteria used for both income and nutritional risk are entitled to WIC benefits for up to a period of six months postnatal. However, those who choose to continue breastfeeding their children even after the six months elapse, continue to enjoy the WIC benefits for up to a year after delivery. For applicants in a family of three who receive no other applicable means-tested benefits such as snap, Medicaid or Temporary assistance for the needy families, it is a requirement. It is required that they have a gross household income of over $36,612 for them to specify for the WIC benefits (Pollitt & Oh, 1994).
Government programs involved and Responsibility towards Provision of Services
There are quite some bodies charged with the role of overseeing WIC activities at all levels. This includes the agricultural department for food and nutritional services (USDA) which ensure that the provision of WIC benefits is realized by providing funds to health departments in the state as well as corresponding agencies. This, therefore, ensures that the WIC program is administered at the state level (Grier & Bryant, 2005).
The states also participate in the WIC program. This is through the allocation of federal funds that is generated from the local WIC clinics providing food coupons and services to participants. The services mentioned above include but are not limited to individual counseling on nutrition, nutrition education classes, and the support for breastfeeding. Others include support to cease from smoking as well as referrals to both health and social services (Morshed et al., 2015).
Political, Economic and Financial Challenges Associated with WIC
In spite the fact that the key parts of the WIC program has maintained stability over time while contributing to positive developmental and health care for women with low income and young children facing nutritional risks, there are quite a number of challenges associated with the service delivery of the program. An in-depth understanding of these challenges underlying the program would be informative to the development of promising health care and nutrition program (Kramer, 1998).
The disentanglement of financial cost incurred in health care from the effects it poses on WIC is quite challenging. The redirection of existing WIC funds comes at the expense of failing to serve many families who would otherwise gain from the program. This is attributed to the high short-term cost incurred in connecting women and children to a health care prevention, diagnosis as well as treatment of diseases. However, underutilization of these services may result in more health issues and costs (Kramer, 1998).
The economic complexities associated with WIC extend beyond the program beneficiaries. Budgeting issues come about because of issues that arise from the estimation of the number of WIC eligibles. This includes the individual income as well as the nutritional criteria. These estimation procedures do not account for the duration of certification hence leading to inaccurate estimations of eligibles. Additionally, obsolete data sets or no data set at all are used in the estimation of nutritional requirements of an applicant. Current techniques employed for estimation fail to take into account the fact that some states raised their cut off Medicaid’s for infants, thus raising eligibility (Grier & Bryant, 2005).
Cases of fraud and abuse in the WIC program have been documented. These issues contribute to the wastage of taxpayer’s money. As a result, the substantial reduction in the funds, fewer persons are enrolled to benefit from WIC. This is shutting out a significant number that suffers the selfish interests of these frauds that could be food vendors, participants as well as employees (Currie & Reichman, 2015).
Conclusion
My analysis of the WIC program reveals its unique successes in upholding and promoting health care of our children. This is through the provision of coupons to purchase specific high-nutrition foods and dietary supplement, health, and nutritional counseling, as well as referrals to health care and social service providers. However, Challenges to the program posed by selfish journalists, policy makers, and politicians aim at pooling it out of the market or using it for their primary gain. This, therefore, calls for joint efforts for systematic explorations on how to strengthen the program thereby expanding those factors that do and discarding those that do not. I, therefore, plead with the Congress to do a retrospective review of the methodologies used. These are the approaches adopted in the development of estimates of eligibles as well as implement the proposals made above so as to improve this program that has such an admirable purpose.
References
Chamberlin, L. A., Sherman, S. N., Jain, A., Powers, S. W., & Whitaker, R. C. (2002). The challenge of preventing and treating obesity in low-income, preschool children: perceptions of WIC health care professionals. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 156(7), 662-668.
Currie, J., & Reichman, N. (2015). Policies to Promote Child Health: Introducing the Issue. The Future of Children, 25(1), 3.
Grier, S., & Bryant, C. A. (2005). Social marketing in public health. Annual review of public health, 26(1), 319-339.
Gundersen, C., & Ver Ploeg, M. (2015). Food Assistance Programs and Child Health. The Future of Children, 25(1), 91.
Kramer, M. S. (1998). Maternal nutrition, pregnancy outcome and public health policy. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 159(6), 663.
Morshed, A. B., Davis, S. M., Greig, E. A., Myers, O. B., & Cruz, T. H. (2015). Effect of WIC Food Package Changes on Dietary Intake of Preschool Children in New Mexico. Health Behavior and Policy Review, 2(1), 3-12.
Pollitt, E., & Oh, S. Y. (1994). Early supplementary feeding, child development, and health policy. Food And Nutrition Bulletin-United Nations University-, 15, 208-208.
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