The Assessment of the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) Program

In 1997, the program served some 7.4 million pregnant women, infants and children. "It is estimated that every dollar spent on WIC nets between a $1.77 and $3.13 in Medicaid savings for newborns and their mothers. The program has been proven to: increase the number of women receiving prenatal care, reduce the incidence of wretched birth weight and fetal mortality, reduce anemia, and enhance the fareary quality of the diet of participants." (FRAC, 2001).

In order to at a lower placestand the confirming impact the program has on its participants and community welfare and economics, it is requisite to understand the premise of WIC. The WIC program premise states that low income predisposes women, infants and children under the age of 5 to poor sustentation status and plain poorer long-range health show upcomes. The program utilizes twain an income standard ground on the federal p solely overty level and a nutrition endangerment criteria to determine a participant's eligibility. The program then seeks out scarce program resources to target to individuals with limited income resources at the highest riskiness of poor outcomes.

Conflict exists in the social welfare programs over exactly how to define and measure meagerness. In order to strike inadequate economic resources for the procurement and consumption of basic goods and aids, poverty is defined as economic deprivation. This model i

A number of studies conducted before the WIC program was usable revealed serious malnutrition among primeval American infants and children?one study in the Navajo nation found that infants were dying from malnutrition connect to weaning and privation of nutritious infant formula. The implementation of WIC and other programs has prevented these tragic deaths. The judge of anemia, growth stunting and underweight among Native American children all decreased over the last quarter of a century. Native Americans have seen a steady decline in both maternal and infant mortality rates. (FRAC, 2000)

The WIC program has been successful with nutrition development peer based organizations such as La Leche League, which has helped to educate the Latin-American population.

Another program has been documented in the extremely rural Forsythe County Iowa. It is called The Best Beginnings. "The Best Beginnings program of breastfeeding education through peer counselors has been highly successful. Within six months aft(prenominal) the start of the program in 1992, the breastfeeding initiation rate had change magnitude from 10 percent to 26 percent." (American Dietetic Association, 2000).

"Poverty among children is associated with stricken growth and cognitive development. Empirical evidence shows that poverty is related to just about all indicators of child growth and development and to almost all intervening risk agents for delayed growth and development." (Institute of Medicine, 2000) It is this risk that created the WIC program. Has the program improved the odds? "Through the provision of appurtenant nutritious foods, nutrition education and health and social service referrals, the WIC program is expected to improve the nutrition status of low-income women, infants and children by addressing the risk factors for poor outcomes." (Institute of Medicine, 2000) The most significant risk factor in assessment is by population. This is also where WIC has proven to be the most supportive an
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