The Women, Infant's and Children programs - Research Paper Example

Women, Infant's and Children Programs Malnutrition and starvation are increasingly serious problems in America (Abramsky, 2009). Millions of people, including women and children, suffer from malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, starvation or other forms of caloric deficiency, despite the country being the leading industrial economy of the world. Ironically, this phenomenon coexists with an increasing amount of obesity, and is sometimes found in the same people, with many getting too many calories with too few minerals, vitamins and necessary nutrients! The work of support organizations and agencies is far from irrelevant in the modern socioeconomic climate: It is dreadfully topical. The Women, Infant's and Children programs have been astonishingly helpful at combating everything from child obesity to malnutrition and hunger, from inequality to abuse. History The WIC was founded in 1973 (New York Times, 1987). But its history stretches back to the 1960s (Oliveira et al, 2002). Studies and national television programs were discovering that starvation, malnutrition and other forms of caloric deficiency were preventing many Americans from having enough to eat. The Poor People's March on Washington and major documentaries focused the issue and brought it to the attention of policymakers. A 1969 Conference was convened, which included in its report a recommendation to focus specifically on the needs of low-income women, pregnant women, children and infants, whose gaps between nutritional needs and opportunities were often most dire. A Commodity Supplemental Food Program was created that targeted women and children under 6, but studies found that it and the Food Stamp Program were not dealing with the special needs of the groups in question. An amendment of the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 finally created the WIC department as a two year pilot. The department was designed to work with the USDA, who would provide the food support and commodities. The WIC program differed itself from the CSFP by coordinating food relief with health care and other aid programs. USDA resistance to coordination required a federal court order to force them to comply. The WIC proved successful enough to be established permanently on October 7, 1975, by PL 94-105. Eligibility was expanded to nonbreastfeeding women, and while inadequate income was an eligibility requirement, it was not specifically defined, giving the program flexibility. In 1999, the USDA implemented standard measures of food security and, after two years, published a report that indicated what food scholars had been saying for years: Malnutrition and caloric deficiency were reaching epidemic levels (Smith, 2007, pg. 307). The standardization of food insufficiency metrics has transformed the debate around food provision entirely and galvanized public interest and support. Mission Statement The WIC's mission is as follows: • Protect women, children and infants • Improve nutrition and health of poor and disadvantaged women • Provide education, support and information • Support women with post-partum depression The WIC themselves define their goal as, “To safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care” (2003). They define their mission completion mechanisms as, “Food, nutrition counseling, and access to health services are provided to low-income women, infants, and children under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, popularly known as WIC. WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children who are found to be at nutritional risk...Most State WIC programs provide vouchers that participants use at authorized food stores. A wide variety of State and local organizations cooperate in providing the food and health care benefits, and 46,000 merchants nationwide accept WIC vouchers”. Financial Reports/Summaries WIC's current funding level for the fiscal year of 2010 was $7.25 billion (WIC, 2010). This is up from $20.6 million in 1974 at its inception and $4.0 billion in 2000. At this funding level, WIC provides services to 9.3 million people! This works out to $779 per person per annum, a clear sign of need for improvement in funding. Of those served, 4.33 million were children and 2.22 million were infants, meaning that the vast majority of those served by the program are children themselves. Critical Analysis A critical analysis of WIC's success as a program indicates that it: • Has helped combat abuse • Has helped reduce cost and waste • Has been accepted by both Republicans and Democrats; strong bipartisan support • Has caused people to eat vegetables and fruits (Parker-Pope, 2008) • Has improved education on healthy alternatives • Has meaningfully reduced child starvation and family starvation • Has improved access to farm-fresh fruits How can a program that has not have specific mandates to or funding for abuse combating, a primarily health-and-food oriented service, have reduced abuse? The evidence is clear: It has (NWICA, 2010). Combating post-partum depression has obvious implications for reducing abuse. Helping mothers feed themselves and their children helps keep tempers from becoming frayed and stress from mounting. So too does providing health care reduce risks of abuse and neglect. Helping women provide for their children reduces the amount of work they may have to do to supplement income so that they can avoid neglecting their children or having to spend more money on day care and babysitters. And by increasing support for women, dependence on men or on a second breadwinner is reduced, making women less likely to have to shack up with or date an abusive boyfriend or husband. The above indicates a lesson of WIC programs: A little support at the right place goes a long way. Reducing abuse reduces psychological harm, the likelihood of abused children turning to crime or becoming abusers themselves, police calls and 911 costs. Society eventually has to pay for those who fall through the cracks: It is most efficacious to pay early and let a little money multiply by cascading over multiple systems. Indeed, a study found that WIC not only saves money in this fashion but produces cascading effects on the private economy, such as $2 billion in non-tax revenues being created through “competitive bidding of infant formula” (NWICA, 2010). Medicaid costs are reduced by $12,000 to $15,000 for every low birth-weight incident prevented, which means that a few hundred per annum can save tens of thousands to the taxpayer (NWICA, 2010). On average, this works out to every WIC dollar saving $1.92 to $4.21 in Medicaid savings. WIC is an extremely efficient program and actually reduces costs to other agencies! A welfare program that obviates the need for other welfare programs should be highly popular and bipartisan. Indeed, WIC has proved to have the longevity it has, admittedly with some bumps along the road from some short-sighted politicians, due to the bipartisan support it enjoys. “WIC is one of the rare programs that enjoys widespread bipartisan support because it’s cost-effective and has been shown to improve the nutrition and health of participants” (CBPP, 2010). Initial legislation was sponsored by Hubert Humphrey, but the Nixon and Carter administrations continued it (WIC, 2010). The WIC's food programs have proven to have real impacts on nutrition. WIC infants are on average much healthier than non-WIC infants, have better nutrient intakes, and are less likely to be underweight but not more likely to be overweight (NWICA, 2010). Siega-Riz et al found that “For those Read More