A new research study by our PHFE WIC Program Director of Research and Evaluation, Shannon Whaley, in collaboration with UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Tulane University found that raising nutrition standards for the federal WIC assistance program for new mothers and their children helped reduce obesity risks for children who’d been served by the program since birth.
Sweeping changes designed to make a major federal food assistance program more nutritious for low-income families were effective in reducing obesity risk for 4-year-olds who had been on the program since birth, according to a new study by researchers from Tulane University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and PHFE WIC.
The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is among the first to use a rigorous research design to demonstrate the impact of major food package changes made by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) in 2009 on obesity risk and growth trajectories for different groups of children receiving the program. It is the most comprehensive study of the impact of these changes on obesity risk in Los Angeles County where over half of all children under age 5 are enrolled in WIC.
