The federal government shutdown from December 22, 2018 – January 25, 2019 created an unprecedented disruption in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) in partnership with University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Advisors sought and received an Opportunity Grant from the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, to conduct a cross-sectional qualitative study to capture California SNAP participants' experiences during the benefit disruption. The study aim was to ascertain how the disruption affected participants' food security, health, and well being. Data were collected February and March 2019 in four focus groups with low-income adults in Los Angeles, Tuolumne, San Mateo, and San Francisco. The study was published in the journal Nutrients on June 23, 2020 by Wendi Gosliner, Ken Hecht, Elsa Esparza and Lorrene Ritchie from NPI in collaboration with Wei-Ting Chen from Stanford University (affiliated with UCCE at the time of the study), and Cathryn Johnson and Natalie Price from UCCE. Participants in the study reported that:
- SNAP benefits generally are too low for participants to afford an adequate, healthy diet. Despite much effort to manage limited food budgets, participants routinely run out of money for food.
- Eligibility determinations for SNAP feel overly restrictive, especially in high cost-of living areas, and the program is not adequately agile to respond in a timely way to frequent changes in participants' employment or other circumstances.
- Customer service and communications between SNAP offices and participants show room for improvement. The 2019 benefit disruption highlighted challenges in communications; few participants reported being informed about the disruption in a timely manner, if at all, and most reported confusion.
- Some participants described the 2019 benefit disruption as providing temporary relief from routine end-of-the-month scarcity; overall, the disruption caused a great deal of emotional stress, heightened food insecurity, and increased financial distress.
- The disruption resulted in many participants feeling more insecure about their SNAP benefits, and some losing faith in the government.
Participants recommended SNAP policy and program changes to:
- Improve benefit adequacy by increasing benefit levels.
- Modify eligibility and benefit formulas to better address high costs-of-living as well as the expenses associated with working (e.g., transportation, childcare).
- Improve customer service and communications.
- Prevent future disruptions.
Read more in the research brief and the study.
Oakland and San Francisco, Calif. became the first large, western U.S. cities to pass excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) in November 2016 with the goal of reducing SSB consumption and raising revenues for public health education. Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) affiliated researchers examined how much the excise taxes increased retail prices for SSBs in Oakland and San Francisco. In their latest study, they found that retail prices of SSBs significantly increased by approximately the amount of the excise taxes–1 cent per fluid ounce–within four to 10 months of implementation. The prices of beverages that were not taxed–water, milk, and 100% juice–were unaffected. The study was published online on May 21, 2020 in the American Journal of Public Health by lead author Jennifer Falbe with the University of California (UC), Davis Department of Human Ecology. The study was conducted in collaboration with Scott Kaplan of the UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Alberto Ortega Hinijosa of IMPAQ International, Kristine Madsen of the Berkeley Food Institute and UC Berkeley School of Public health, and Matthew Lee and Nadia Rojas of UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
Nutrition Policy Institute's director and cooperative extension specialist Lorrene Ritchie and colleagues published a new study suggesting that efforts to prevent childhood obesity may be more effective when community programs and policies are both intensive and are implemented in multiple settings in which children live, learn, and play. This finding has important implications for practitioners, suggesting that to be effective communities need to plan a sufficient number of programs and policies of higher intensity (i.e. longer duration, fuller reach, and greater strength of strategies) among multiple settings where children can be exposed to these interventions. The study was published in Preventing Chronic Disease on May 7, 2020 by lead author Vicki Collie-Akers from the University of Kansas Medical Center along with co-authors Stephen Fawcett, Jerry Schultz, Kandace Fleming and Rebecca Swinburne Romine also from the University of Kansas, as well as Edward Frongillo from the University of South Carolina, and Sonia Arteaga from the National Institutes of Health. Study data were collected in 2013-2015 from 130 communities across the United States as part of the in the cross-sectional Healthy Communities Study, a six-year observational study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researchers' new study of 297 licensed California child care providers that care for infants suggests that those participating in the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) offered fruits and vegetables more often and sweetened yogurt less often to infants in their care compared to sites that did not participate in the CACFP. Additionally, more CACFP participants compared to those that did not participate in CACFP were in alignment with the current recommendations to not offer cow's milk to infants prior to their first birthday. However, the study also showed that CACFP participants were less likely to usually provide breastmilk to infants, suggesting the need for additional support and recommendations for CACFP participants on breastfeeding resources for providers and families. The study was conducted in 2016 prior to updates to the CACFP nutrition standards which went into effect in October 2017. Results from the study were published online ahead of print on April 29, 2020 in the Maternal and Child Health Journal. The state-wide child care study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Healthy Eating Research Program, and was conducted by NPI's Lorrene Ritchie, Danielle Lee, Klara Gurzo (currently with Stockholm University Department of Public Health Sciences), and Lilly Nhan (currently with University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health) in collaboration with Elyse Homel Vitale of the Child Care Food Program Roundtable (previously with California Food Policy Advocates) and Sallie Yoshida of Social Policy Research Associates (previously with Sarah Samuels Center for Public Health Research & Evaluation).
Researchers at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, partnered with researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Stanford University, and Nutrition Policy Institute's Christina Hecht, investigated factors associated with the intake of drinking water among US high school students. Data on 10,698 students was obtained from the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a nationally representative sample of US high school students. Because adolescents are the highest consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), and many drink little water, the study sought to understand the associations between plain water intake and youths' demographics, academic grades and other behavioral factors. The understandings gained may inform interventions to increase consumption of water in place of SSBs among US adolescents. Almost half (48.7%) of high school students reported little plain water consumption (only two or fewer times per day) and nearly one-quarter (24.6%) drank plain water less than once per day. Analysis using logistic regression found that factors most strongly associated with low plain water consumption were regular consumption of soda (≥1 time per day) and low consumption of vegetables (report was published in the American Journal of Health Promotion on March 18, 2020.
