Portrait of WIC Participants and Programs: Capturing Data through the Abt-Designed Automated Reporting System
Highlights
- The WIC program needed to track beneficiaries and its performance
- Abt designed and operated a national automated reporting system
- The information the system collected enabled assessments of program effectiveness
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health-care referrals, and nutrition education. The beneficiaries: nearly 8 million low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, infants, and U-5 children at nutritional risk. WIC serves 53 percent of all infants through 47,000 authorized retailers and 1,900 local agencies in 10,000 clinic sites. That’s a lot of moving parts to track.
To update information regularly on participants, Abt designed and operated a national automated reporting system. It got participant information through the automated transfer of data from state management information systems. The data, collected and delivered biennially, captured the characteristics of participating individuals and families and the features of state and local agencies providing WIC services.
The data, collected and delivered biennially, captured the characteristics of participating individuals and families and the features of state and local agencies providing WIC services. The information also enabled assessments of program effectiveness, targeting of program resources, responses to public inquiries, and preparation of WIC program reports.