The Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture released a report to Congress stating that limited access to affordable and nutritious food is considered a contributor to obesity and disease throughout the United States. The report examines access to food throughout the United States, characteristics and causes for access levels, and effects of limited access, and suggests recommendations for increased access to food throughout the United States. The report also provides a literature review, assessment of access to supermarkets and grocery stores, and an analysis of economic and health effects related to access levels.

Current statistics show that one in three adults is obese, and from 1980 to the present, the number of obese children has tripled. Obesity is particularly a problem in low-income communities of color, and research is showing that low-income communities have little access to healthy food establishments. This resource, from Policy Link, offers four solutions for increasing healthy food establishments in these areas, which include developing new grocery stores, improving small stores, connecting farmers to low-income communities, and sustaining farmers markets in such areas.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) currently reaches 45 million people, which is an increase of 69 percent since the current economic recession began. From the Urban Institute, this fact sheet discusses how SNAP caseloads and unemployment have increased both nationally and by State. Authors provide a map of the United States, which shows the concurrent increase in SNAP and unemployment across the country.

As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program through the Brookings Institution, this paper analyzes poverty across cities and suburbs as a result of the recession. Since December 2007, 6.6 million people have become unemployed, and the need for assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly, food stamps) has reached a high. The author provides an analysis of unemployment and food stamps as indicators of poverty to understand how poverty across these areas has unevenly increased.

This study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. and its subcontractors, American Management Systems, Inc. and the George Washington University Center for Health Services Research and Policy, was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to identify strategies states and local welfare offices are using to promote participation in food stamps, Medicaid and SCHIP and the ongoing challenges they face in providing support to working families. (author abstract)

Congress recently passed legislation mandating that food prescribed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA’s) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) be provided using electronic benefit transfer (EBT), which operates like a debit card. Ten State agencies currently provide WIC benefits using EBT, and many other States are in the process of implementing EBT technology in the WIC program. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, reauthorizing USDA’s child nutrition and WIC programs, requires that all States use EBT technology by 2020. Utilizing EBT technology will enable WIC moms to purchase WIC foods without the visibility of paper vouchers. The EBT system will also provide data to WIC State agencies on each food item purchased so they can better manage food costs through informed food package decisions and rebates on infant formula. EBT will also assist retailers in efficiently completing WIC transactions.

This paper is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and shows why collaboration and coordination across programs is critical in terms of policy, procedure, and data utilization. Designed for practitioners, authors discuss the challenges to implement this process and how to overcome them. Authors focus on Medicaid and SNAP, but also provide examples of how to include TANF, child care, and other programs in such an effort to better support working families.

From the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, this report provides findings from the implementation evaluation of Head Start programs that participated in the "I Am Moving, I Am Learning" trainings. From the programs that participated in the spring 2006, program administrators, classroom teachers, and home visitors across many programs reported that they had increased children’s movement time and improved the food choices available to children.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued this report on revised USDA policy for free school meals for children. Under the new policy, if anyone in a household is a recipient of benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP: formerly the Food Stamp Program), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance program, or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), all children in the household are categorically eligible for free school meals. This policy change will help an estimated 2.5 million children who have been missed in the enrollment process receive free school lunches.

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this report offers information on how states can use federal stimulus dollars provided through the TANF Emergency Fund to provide emergency food assistance to needy families through food banks, agencies, or other distribution sites, or to supplement USDA’s Summer Food Service Programs. Such additional funds can support food networks in supplementing the food and nutrition for low-income families across the country.