The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children—commonly known as WIC—is celebrating 50 years of improving the health of participants, including those who are pregnant, new parents, infants, and children under five. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided the US Department of Agriculture with $390 million, available through FY 2024, to carry out outreach, innovation, and program modernization efforts to increase participation and redemption of benefits for both the WIC program and the WIC Farmers' Market Nutrition Program. The USDA contracted with Mathematica and their partners, including the Nutrition Policy Institute, to design and implement an evaluation of these projects being implemented across 89 WIC State agencies and 51 Farmers Market Nutrition Program State agencies. The evaluation will assess whether the modernization projects being implemented are associated with increases in enrollment, participation, retention, and redemption of benefits; improvements in participant experience; and reduced disparities in program delivery. The five-year project began in September 2023. NPI research project team members will include Lorrene Ritchie, Danielle Lee, Celeste Felix, KC Whitsett and Reka Vasicsek.
KC Whitsett joined the Nutrition Policy Institute at the University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources on March 25, 2024, as a project policy analyst. Originally from Virginia, KC earned a BS in Kinesiology and Health Sciences from the College of William & Mary. KC also holds a Master of Public Health from UC Berkeley, with an interdisciplinary concentration on research and evaluation methods for food access and nutrition programs. Her previous professional experiences include program and grant management and community health education. She has expertise in the evaluation of physical activity and food access programs—healthy corner store initiatives, mobile markets, SNAP incentives—and farmworkers' access to health care services. In her role at NPI, KC will support qualitative data collection and analysis for projects related to school meals, the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children—commonly known as WIC.