The wic program is primarily for

To receive the Gold Award, local WIC agencies must complete an application which evaluates the policies and procedures surrounding breastfeeding promotion and support, the Breastfeeding Peer Counselor program, and partnerships with local hospitals and other organizations working toward similar breastfeeding goals.

Indiana WIC local agencies have been hard at work over the past 5 years to put these best practices in place for breastfeeding promotion and support, and several agencies have been recognized for achieving these awards. Indiana WIC continues to support communication, messaging and resources focused on the breastfeeding.

Local WIC agencies and staff have received information on important things to consider as they provide breastfeeding support. Please contact your local WIC clinic directly for additional details or questions for services in your area. Some useful resources are below:. WIC Women, Infants, and Children is a nutrition program, nationally recognized as an effective means for:.

For questions regarding the WIC Program, please call , or email inwic isdh. In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U. Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information e. Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English.

To request a copy of the complaint form, call Look for a. Another way to meet the income requirement is through Automatic Income Eligibility. It works like this. If you already are participating in particular programs , you can automatically be eligible through automatic income eligibility.

Some of these programs might include:. California is one example. The final eligibility requirement for the WIC program is nutrition risk.

To meet this criterion, you need to meet with a health professional. Additionally, you can apply for these benefits at migrant health camps and centers, public housing sites, and Indian health service facilities. Not sure how to get this information? These benefits include food items, breastfeeding support and education, nutrition counseling and education, and more.

WIC food is full of calcium, protein, vitamins C and A, iron, and other essential ingredients. The food items usually include cheese, milk, eggs, breakfast cereal, brown rice, whole-wheat bread, and peanut butter.

They also include legumes, canned fish, juice, and beans. Additionally, you can receive infant formula through this program. But, again, WIC can be incredibly helpful in helping you get access to these assistance types. Once you have this information, you can contact that office to set up a certification appointment with them.

You can bring this along with you to your certification appointment. But here, too, the body of research on effectiveness is disappointingly sparse, with a few studies concluding that WIC reduced iron-deficiency among poor children and modestly increased the intake of selected nutrients.

It found that children participating in WIC, like infants, did not have higher levels of caloric intake than a comparison group, but they did have higher mean intakes of certain nutrients, especially iron and vitamin C.

The strongest positive dietary effects were for the most disadvantaged children, including those who were very poor and from female-headed households. WIC children were also more likely to be immunized and to have a regular source of medical care than similar low-income children not on WIC.

However, as noted above for infants, these findings should be viewed as nothing more than "suggestive" because of technical problems related to the evaluation. A more recent study used data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals to compare preschoolers one to five years old in households with incomes below percent of the poverty level participating in WIC to a comparable group of preschoolers not in WIC.

After attempting to control for differences in socioeconomic characteristics and possible selection bias, the study reported that WIC had statistically significant positive effects for 10 of the 15 nutrients examined, with particularly significant increases in the intake of iron and zinc often lacking in the diets of WIC children. Although the diets of most WIC children already exceeded the recommended daily allowances for many nutrients, these findings suggest significant dietary improvements for particular groups.

Once again, however, this research suffers from the generic weaknesses of comparison groups. Moreover, the considerable differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of WIC participants and the comparison group of eligible nonparticipants make it particularly difficult to judge how successfully the study controlled for these differences.

The analysis was limited to six states that consistently participated in the PNSS during the time period examined. Anemia among children six to sixty months of age declined steadily from 7. Other studies report similar decreases. The decline in anemia could be due to several factors.

First, because the data are limited to children covered by programs such as WIC, this decline could also have reflected a change in the composition of the children covered by the programs. For example, as WIC's funding and enrollment have expanded, the children in the program have probably become less disadvantaged.

If the newly eligible children had lower rates of anemia than the earlier WIC recipients, they would have lowered the average rate of anemia, even if the WIC benefit itself had no effect.

In addition, this reduction may be part of a more general downward trend in iron-deficiency anemia, caused by such factors as an increase in breastfeeding, the substitution of iron-fortified formula for unfortified formula and cow's milk, and general nutritional education efforts.

WIC may also have contributed indirectly to this trend through its required iron fortification of many foods. As Barbara Devaney, who conducted some of the major WIC studies for Mathematica Policy Research, observes, "Much of these foods that are on the shelves of supermarkets are iron-fortified and affect the diets of nonparticipants as well as program participants. But this is speculation. No study has successfully isolated WIC's impact from the changing socioeconomic characteristics of recipients, nor from the apparent secular decline in anemia.

Moreover, the existing studies are limited to a small number of states not representative of the nation as a whole. More importantly, the practical significance of these modest findings is unknown. If there had been a socially significant reduction in anemia, one would expect, for example, to see it reflected in a reduction in the behaviors associated with anemia.

But, as Devaney comments, "Little is known about the long-term effects of WIC on improving behavioral and cognitive development, outcomes that would presumably result from better iron nutrition status. The purported three-to-one-savings calculation, cited by Louis Sullivan and so many others, comes solely from research on one of the smallest parts of WIC, the program for pregnant women 12 percent of participants. In , the U.

It estimated that prenatal WIC participation resulted in a 25 percent reduction in low-birth-weight births under 2, grams and a 44 percent reduction in very low-birth-weight births under 1, grams. A deeper look at this body of research, however, suggests that the GAO's conclusions should have been considerably more tentative. All but one of the studies reviewed by the GAO were statistical comparisons of WIC participants with nonparticipants, and attempts made to control for other factors that influence birth outcomes varied in their success.

One of the best of these studies was conducted by Devaney and her colleagues. After applying statistical controls for identifiable demographic and parental-care characteristics that could also affect birth outcomes and Medicaid costs, the researchers found that WIC participants had fewer premature births, and their newborns had 1.

Moreover, their estimates suggest a striking 28 percent decrease in the number of newborns with "low" birth weights under 2, grains , and an even larger, 59 percent decrease in the number of newborns with "very low" birth weights under 1, grams.

Despite these encouraging results, Devaney and other researchers in this field have been forthright in describing the limitations of their findings, most notably because of simultaneity bias and selection bias. Independent of any program effect, the longer a woman is pregnant, the more likely it is that she will enroll in WIC - because she has more opportunities either to learn about the program or to enroll. Thus positive birth outcomes for women who enroll in WIC late in their pregnancy are more likely due to the length of their pregnancy than to the effects of WIC.

Failure to account for this "simultaneous" effect exaggerates WIC's impact. Several studies have tried to address the simultaneity problem. When Devaney and her colleagues, for example, attempted to control for gestational age, the estimated Medicaid savings declined by about 55 percent.

Similarly, using national data, Anne Gordon and Lyle Nelson of Mathematica found that accounting for simultaneity bias resulted in substantial reductions in otherwise comparable birth effects. These corrections may, however, result in an understatement of WIC's impact because they tend to wipe out any positive effects on increasing pregnancy duration.

Selection bias is also a serious issue in all these studies - as most responsible researchers in the field acknowledge. Two studies made especially extensive efforts to control for selection bias. In Gordon and Nelson's study, WIC's estimated effects on birth weight reversed, becoming "large and negative. But the consistency and strength of their results strongly suggest that selection bias is, indeed, exaggerating program impacts.

Mark Lopez, an economist at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, reviewed their efforts and concluded that the selection-adjusted results "are so consistent in sign, and are statistically significant, the unadjusted WIC results Another study that attempted to control for selection bias provides further evidence that WIC's impact may vary by subgroup. Michael Brien of the University of Virginia and Christopher Swann of Mathematica used the same data source as Gordon and Nelson, but a different sample and methodology, to analyze birth outcomes for whites and blacks separately.

Their unadjusted results indicate that WIC increased birth weight by 3. After correcting for selection bias, however, birth-weight effects increased to 13 percent for blacks and became "not statistically significant" for whites. They also found that WIC had no statistically significant effect on the incidence of low birth weight or on infant and neonatal mortality.

Of course, race is likely a proxy for various unmeasured factors among participants or programs - for example, marital status at first birth unwed teen parenthood , extreme poverty, or social disorganization.

Thus the popular claim that "WIC works" is based on research results for only a small portion of the program. It does not adjust for simultaneity and selection bias, and it ignores the more modest effects for the rest of WIC.

A more appropriate way to describe WIC's effects is in terms of a range. WIC for pregnant mothers has perhaps zero to substantial impacts on infant mortality, prematurity, and birth weight. But the rest of the program for infants, children, and postpartum and breastfeeding mothers has small to modest impacts on anemia and nutrient intake. There is also a glimmer of evidence that WIC's beneficial effects are concentrated among the most needful recipients. These realities should not be surprising, given a whole body of research in related fields documenting the limited impact of nutritional supplements, counseling, and prenatal care on any but the most "severely undernourished.

How should policy makers respond to the likelihood that WIC's effects are modest and probably concentrated among the most disadvantaged recipients? Certainly not by continuing to expand WIC's coverage to progressively less needy families. But, just as certainly, not by simple-mindedly cutting or abandoning the program. The problems that WIC addresses are serious and require attention.

In an age when so many government programs for the poor seem to have no effect, and may even make things worse, WIC's possible beneficial effects should not be slighted. Moreover, in many inner-city neighborhoods, the program's one hundred dollars' worth of food has become an important component of the economic safety net for mothers with newborns.

Unfortunately, no one really knows how to make WIC more effective. Partly because it has been so politically incorrect to acknowledge the limitations of these research findings, the necessary research and planning have not been conducted.