The United States responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by expanding a variety of social safety net programs. Policy responses across the U.S. included workplace protections, workers compensation, and a provision of childcare for essential workers. However, families' experiences with the pandemic-related changes to safety net programs are still not well explored. University of California researchers conducted a study to understand take up, utilization, and experiences with social safety net programs among families with young children in California during COVID-19. Thirty four California parents and caregivers of young children were interviewed from August 2020 to April 2021. Interviewees reported experiencing some benefits of increased safety net support early in the pandemic, including improved food security and counseling support for those studying at community colleges. But generally, parents reported being overwhelmed and stressed and that insufficient childcare and housing instability were not addressed by the social safety net system. Study findings suggest that policy responses carry potential to alleviate economic-related stressors, like food insecurity and also highlight a critical need to strengthen support for families. This study was conducted by the Assessing California Communities' Experiences with Safety Net Supports Survey (ACCESS) study team, including: Alyssa Mooney, Kaitlyn Jackson, Rita Hamad, and Mekhala Hoskote from the UC San Francisco, Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, Lia C.H. Fernald from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Wendi Gosliner from the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Nutrition Policy Institute. This research was published in BioMed Central Public Health and supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Licensed family child care homes (FCCH) provide child care in individual homes, are often located in the same neighborhood as the families they serve and often provide longer hours of care at a lower cost than child care centers. New research shows that a self-paced, online nutrition training for FCCH providers has the potential to make childhood nutrition guidance more accessible and may help bridge a potential regulatory gap: licensed FCCHs in California not currently participating in the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program only receive one hour of mandatory nutrition training if licensed after 2016—leaving out nearly 30,000 providers licensed before 2016 who provide care to over 310,000 children—and are not required to offer foods and beverages that meet nutrition standards. The training—available in both English and Spanish and free of cost to California-based providers—consists of four 20-minute interactive models providing guidance on what and how to feed infants and toddlers. Child care providers reported high levels of satisfaction, as well as an intention to make changes in feeding practices, after completing a pilot-test of the online training. Findings also identified a need for culturally relevant information and a live nutrition educator to discuss the training material. The research article was published in the California Agriculture journal and authored by Danielle Lee, Ron Strochlic, and Lorrene Ritchie from the Nutrition Policy Institute, Deepa Srivastava and Marisa Neelon from the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Abbey Alkon and Victoria Keeton from UC, San Francisco and the California Childcare Health Program. The project was funded by a grant from UC ANR.

Lorrene Ritchie, director of the Nutrition Policy Institute, will serve as an ad-hoc committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study on Complementary Feeding Interventions for Infants and Young Children under Age 2: Scoping of Promising Interventions to Implement at the Community or State-Level. The committee is tasked to conduct a scoping review and assess available information on interventions aimed at improving infant and young child feeding behaviors. The project is sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additional committee members include committee chair David A. Savitz from Brown University Alpert Medical School and Frank R. Greer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Laura E. Caulfield from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Elizabeth Yakes Jimenez from the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Valerie J. Flaherman from the University of California, San Francisco Institute for Health Policy Studies, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla from the Yale School of Public Health, Charlene M. Russell-Tucker from the Connecticut State Department of Education and Shannon E. Whaley from Heluna Health Public Health Foundation Enterprises-WIC.

Nutrition Policy Institute researchers were awarded three separate 18-month research grants up to $250,000 as part of the Healthy Eating Research 2021 special solicitation on COVID-19 and Socioeconomic Recovery Efforts. Lorrene Ritchie, in collaboration with co-principal investigator Susana Matias from UC Berkeley and the CACFP Roundtable, received a grant for a project titled, “Child and Adult Care Food Program: Impacts of COVID-19 Differences in Reimbursement Rates on Family Childcare Home Providers, Children, and Families”. Wendi Gosliner is serving as co-PI on a project with Juliana Cohen from Merrimack College entitled “Evaluation of Universal Free School Meals,”, and is collaborating with Lia Fernald from UC Berkeley on another project entitled “Longitudinal Study of Low-Income Families with Young Children: Assessing California Communities' Experiences with Safety Net Supports Survey (ACCESS)”. Healthy Eating Research is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Only 9 grants were awarded this cycle.