A major 2009 revision to a federal nutrition program for low-income pregnant women and children improved recipients’ health on several key measures, researchers at UC San Francisco have found.
The study is the first to analyze the health effects of the changes to the U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which serves half of all infants and more than a quarter of all pregnant and postpartum women in the U.S. It comes amid renewed attention to poor maternal health outcomes for low-income women, as well as an opposing push to cut social welfare programs like WIC.
Previous research showed these changes improved maternal and child nutrition by decreasing purchases of refined grains and whole milk, but the effects on health have gone unexamined until the current paper, published Monday, July 1, in JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers used a “quasi-experimental” framework to examine the effects on more than 2 million babies born between 2007 and 2012 to California mothers who received WIC. These babies’ birth certificates were linked to hospital discharge records for mothers and infants, providing information on their health.
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