One Year of WIC During COVID-19: - Waivers are Vital to Participation and Benefit Redemption

This measure of participation WIC also needs to establish a WIC community partners is a modest indicator of the increase in WIC participation outreach program, patterned after the successful SNAP because it does not account for the historic decline in outreach program, which would fund WIC state agencies to participation before COVID-19. [...] during the first year of COVID-19 (March 2020 through February 2021) compared to the same months of the Regional Participation Changes previous year (March 2019 through February 2020) follow Regionally, the change in WIC participation from February a similar pattern in the change in total participation from 2020 to February 2021 ranged from a decrease of 4.5 February 2020 to February 2021 (Appendi. [...] The increased flexibility has contributed to the 2.1 percent national increase in WIC participation Regardless of the reason, more needs to be done to from 6.1 million participants in February 2020 to 6.2 million increase WIC participation and meet the increased demand women, infants, and young children in February 2021. [...] prompted by COVID-19, throughout the economic recovery WIC participation increased in 26 states and the District of and in the future. [...] non-WIC community partners to conduct WIC outreach; Waivers help facilitate WIC benefit redemption, but they n coordinate health and participation data between need to be strengthened and promoted to WIC participants the health care sector and WIC, particularly between to offset the challenges posed by the pandemic.