The WIC program is highly effective at improving nutrition for recipients, but barriers like in-person appointments and closed management systems limit enrollment. Nava PBC developed a prototype API and digital screener in Montana to streamline eligibility and enhance program access, illustrating how API standards could improve interoperability and modernize WIC systems nationwide.
The Benefits Enrollment Field Guide looks at the landscape of America’s safety net benefits experience in 2023 and tracks the differences from our 2019 assessment based on expanded evaluation criteria. It also highlights successful paths to equitable, human-centered experiences. It examines online enrollment for Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), and WIC.
This report presents a menu of strategies that have the potential to increase access to individual public benefit programs or a package of benefits. It focuses on Illinois, but the strategies identified are relevant throughout the country.
Each year, millions of college students struggle to pay for their education and basic needs, including food, childcare, housing, healthcare, and internet service. Among those students are a disproportionate number of first-generation students and students of color. This toolkit aims to build institutional capacity to enable all students to put food on the table, improve health outcomes, focus on school, and graduate.
There has been exponential growth in benefits theft by criminals who are “cloning and skimming” EBT cards, leaving thousands of families with drained accounts and limited recourse in getting back their benefits. In this webinar, a panel of experts discuss what states can do right now to improve EBT security, how to use data to analyze theft patterns, and how EBT payment technology needs to evolve to ensure efficiency, security, and dignity for beneficiaries.
Using 83 interviews with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Medicaid beneficiaries, and 35 interviews with staff from those programs, this paper examines how people differentiate their experiences across programs.
The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) developed the NYC Benefits Platform, including ACCESS NYC, to help residents easily discover and check eligibility for over 80 social programs. This mobile-first, open-source tool uses a simple eligibility screener, reducing access barriers while allowing integration with other city services like MyCity, ensuring efficient access to benefits.
This playbook is designed to help government and other key sectors use data sharing to illuminate who is not accessing benefits, connect under-enrolled populations to vital assistance, and make the benefits system more efficient for agencies and participants alike. It is a step-by-step guide to conducting smooth and efficient data sharing projects that are permissible and secure.
On January 20, 2021, the President issued EO 13985, which established that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all. USDA's Equity Action Plain details a subset of USDA actions to achieve this goal.
The Texting Playbook provides guidance and well-researched strategies to help state agencies implement texting in support of Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It provides an overview of how to start texting clients; the types of messages to send, including real examples; Federal Communications Commision (FCC) policy guidance; how to encourage opt-ins and collect consent; how to avoid coming across as spam; and a cost analysis of texting.
