Ensuring college students have access to nutritious and affordable food is critical to support their health and academic success. However, rates of food insecurity amongst college students—on average 43%—is three times higher than adults in the US. University of California researchers have identified ways to support college students in gaining access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—known as CalFresh in California—including having county staff present on college campuses to support SNAP enrollment and ensuring campus staff have strong relationships with county SNAP agencies. Researchers also identified inconsistent student SNAP eligibility information and procedures across county offices as a common barrier for students to access SNAP benefits. These themes were identified through in-depth interviews with twenty-one key informants, including staff from the UC on-campus Basic Needs Centers, campus financial aid offices, county agencies, and food banks. The findings were published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior by Erin Esaryk and Lorrene Ritchie of the UC Nutrition Policy Institute, Laurel Moffat of Washington State University Extension, and principal investigator Suzanna Martinez of UC San Francisco Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The study was funded by California State Legislature to the UC system for addressing students' basic needs as part of the UC Basic Needs Initiative.
Participants of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program often report high prices and lack of access to high-quality, affordable produce as a leading barrier to increasing their fruit and vegetable consumption. Researchers at the University of California Nutrition Policy Institute compared the costs of the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables for a household when shopping at farmers' markets compared to supermarkets. Using data from eleven farmers' markets and seven supermarkets across California, they found that farmers' market prices tended to be lower than supermarkets for organic fruits and vegetables and higher than supermarkets for conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, though few differences were statistically significant. A family of three may pay $16.34 less on average if shopping at the farmers market instead of the supermarket for organic produce to meet their weekly recommended intake per the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. If purchasing a mixture of conventional and organic produce, it may cost $3.68 more on average to shop at the farmers' market. These findings are important to inform nutrition incentive programs such as Market Match which offer SNAP (CalFresh in California) participants financial incentives to use their benefits at participating farmers' markets. The study was published in the journal Nutrients by NPI researchers Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Karen Webb, Ron Strochlic, and Wendi Gosliner.
Families with low-income that participate in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–known as CalFresh in California–receive monthly benefits to spend on food. The California Nutrition Incentive Program (CNIP), operated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is a strategy to increase CalFresh participants' intake of fruits and vegetables by making them more affordable with financial incentives for purchasing them at venues such as farmers markets. The COVID-19 pandemic led to major disruptions to the food system, resulting in many challenges for farmers and low-income shoppers. Additional federal funds were provided during the pandemic to increase CNIP incentives to better support farmers and CalFresh shoppers. Wendi Gosliner from the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Nutrition Policy Institute received funding from the California Department of Food and Agriculture to evaluate CalFresh farmers market shoppers' experiences of the additional funds for CNIP-type incentives during the pandemic, expanding on her previous CNIP evaluation work. Gosliner will work in partnership NPI researchers Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Celeste Felix and Ron Strochlic, CDFA and the Gretchen Swanson Evaluation Center on the one-year project, which began in January 2022.
Nutrition Policy Institute researcher Wendi Gosliner presents virtually at the 2021 American Public Health Association 2021 Annual Meeting and Expo October 24-27. Gosliner and NPI co-authors Ron Strochlic and Marisa Tsai present a virtual talk on October 26 titled 'Increasing fresh local produce in prisons: Promising practices to improve health, foster food justice, and support local food systems'. Gosliner presents an in-person talk with NPI co-authors Celeste Felix, Strochlic and Tsai on October 27 titled ‘Texting monthly nutrition messages to all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants in San Diego county, California: Promising pilot study results'. Gosliner is also co-author of a talk presented by Mekhala Hoskote of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health titled ‘“Hidden pandemic”: Delays in healthcare among low-income families in California during the COVID-19 pandemic' on October 22. The 2021 APHA meeting theme is 'Creating the Healthiest Nation: Strengthening Social Connectedness', and is a hybrid conference allowing attendees to participate online or in-person in Denver, Colorado.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
Nutrition Policy Institute senior researcher and policy advisor, Wendi Gosliner, was featured in an article in Western FarmPress about a pilot program for San Diego County CalFresh participants to receive monthly text messages about the benefits of California-grown fruits and vegetables. Gosliner worked to evaluate the pilot program in collaboration with the UC San Diego Center for Community Health and the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency. Gosliner is quoted as, “In a text, you have very few characters you're communicating with people, so we wanted to make sure we were using cutting-edge behavioral science to construct those messages to have the most impact." A majority of the program recipients who received messages from September 2020 to March 2021 responded to a survey saying they appreciated receiving the text messages. Gosliner reports, “What we see is that there's definitely a decent-sized population of people participating in CalFresh – now this is just in San Diego County but imagine the entire state – who would benefit from having this kind of information available to them, and there is at least a subset of people who really liked it."
