Issue of the Week: Hunger, Disease, Human Rights, Economic Opportunity

Published September 20, 2023

White House Conference on WIC, September 20, 2023. Planet Earth Media WIC Public Service Ad airing late 90s to 2000s.

UPDATED BELOW: 9.27.23

There is a good argument to be made that the single most important, effective and inexpensive in terms of cost/benefit ratio government program in the United States is The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It provides food and healthcare for low-income mothers and infants from prenatal through five years old.

In other words, the basics of life and of healthy development.

We have, mainly through Planet Earth Media, made it a major part of our work over the years to support this key program. In terms of media outreach to those in need and public awareness of the program, our work for two decades was and remains unmatched. Begun at the same time Planet Earth Foundation founder Keith Blume and principal Lisa Blume attended a national conference in Washington, DC, on childhood hunger in 1990, public service campaigns for TV, radio, print and the internet blanketed the nation for twenty years and are seen still on our site and other places. We played a major role in helping to double WIC participation of those in need. At the end of the major media effort, rates started to drop. However, with increased funding during the pandemic, rates began to rise again.

One of the hallmarks of the program was that it always had wide bipartisan support.

Until now.

The Biden administration and Congress, with wide bipartisan support, substantially increased funding for and the scope of the WIC program, as it did to fill many basic needs, during the pandemic. Some of this started in the previous administration, underscoring again the bipartisan nature of the response.

Emergencies do that.

The mantra then became that inflation was resulting from all this spending and debt which hurts everyone but the rich to be sure. However, the source of the spending focussed on was spurious, from the right, but also sometimes from liberals as well. Social programs that provided basic human needs were targeted often. That they were providing basic human needs and all the plusses of this, including to the economy, outside just the emergency of the pandemic, became lost in the fog of polarized warfare. As did the primary sources of spending and debt, the largest tax cuts for corporations in history and the complete underwriting of the stock market, which is to say guaranteeing corporate debt, all to the tune of trillions more than the trillions spent to help people. What could have been a moment of true positive transformation was lost for now, as we have written about before and will again.

Now, some in Congress, mainly in the House, are trying to cut virtually all such programs to where they were before the pandemic or more.

And of course what better place to do that than with taking basic needs, often life itself, from babies.

Babies.

Remember what we have written so many times about what the measure of a species is.

In September of 2022, the Biden White House held a conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health that Lisa Blume participated in. It was good, we thought, that the issue of hunger was receiving White House attention in a purposefully public way. This was the issue, with a global focus, through which we had helped to begin to transform the planet on reducing hunger, infant death rates, birth rates, environmental impact and other related issues, decades before through the impact of Keith Blume’s documentary films on hunger folllowed by ongoing public service media campaigns produced and created by Lisa Blume and Keith Blume. These and the efforts of others nearly changed the world in an even more definitive way on hunger and related issues, and we have contiued to work on these issues ever since The jury was out, we thought, on whether this would make a serious difference.

There have been ups and downs and some positive developments and important accomplishments since, but the jury definitely came in today with a clear verdict of making a difference on a program that could not be more critical.

The White House has been holding monthly conferences on different aspects of issues related to hunger, nutrition and health. We were invited to participate, and today Planet Earth Foundation board member, Clara Lippert, who filmed the Foundation’s climate change public service ad and public service ads and documentary on Ukrainian refugees, did so. The primary subject of the conference was WIC.

The Biden White House is fighting cuts to WIC and indeed has been championing increases.

The PBS Newshour over the weekend interviewed Nell Menefee-Libey, Public Policy Manager for the National WIC Association, a nonprofit organization representing public health nutrition service providers and WIC beneficiaries, who was one of the featured speakers at the White House conference update today. A transcript and link to the NewsHour article follows.

Clara was deeply impressed by Menefee-Libey, as well as the other featured speakers, and by the conference update as a whole. The update of issues around WIC should have been the headlines in the US today.

Needless to say, they weren’t.

Here’s to making that change:

“Proposed WIC funding cuts raise nutrition concerns for low-income families”

By Ali Rogin and Andrew Corkery, PBS NewsHour, Sep 17, 2023

With a possible government shutdown looming, one federal program facing funding cuts is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which helps low-income families buy healthy foods. Nell Menefee-Libey, public policy manager for the nonprofit National WIC Association, joins Ali Rogin to discuss the potential impact on millions of children and pregnant people.

Read the Full Transcript

John Yang:With a possible shutdown looming, Congress is scrambling to find a way to fund the government beyond September 30. Ali Rogin reports on one federal program patient facing potential cuts, WIC, Women, Infants and Children, which helps low income families get healthy foods.
Ali Rogin:Last year, WIC serve more than 6 million people per month, including more than a third of the nation’s infants and participation continues to rise. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, WIC gave women and children between nine to $11 a month to purchase fruits and vegetables.In 2021, Congress increased that amount and women now receive between $45 and $49 a month and children get $25. But in their annual spending bill, House Republicans want to cut those cash benefits back close to pre COVID levels.The left leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates those cuts could affect one and a half million pregnant and postpartum women and three and a half million children. With Congress unlikely to pass those spending bills by the end of the month, the White House is asking for $1.4 billion in emergency funds.Now Nell Menefee-Libey, Public Policy for the National WIC Association, a nonprofit organization representing public health nutrition service providers and WIC beneficiaries. Now, thank you so much for being here.
Nell Menefee-Libey, National WIC Association:Thanks for having me.
Ali Rogin:First of all, for people who might not be familiar with the WIC program, where does it fit in in terms of the spectrum of food assistance programs in the United States?
Nell Menefee-Libey:Sure. WIC is a public health nutrition program that’s targeted to specific life stages. So pregnancy and postpartum and then birth through the fifth birthday. And it delivers really targeted nutrition that is meant to support healthy development during pregnancy, help get mom back to optimal health after delivery, and ensure that kiddos have the healthiest foods that they need for their optimal development during those really key early years.
Ali Rogin:And one of the reasons why this program has grown so much since the pandemic began is simply because participation increased so much. Why did participation get so much more robust during the pandemic?
Nell Menefee-Libey:Yeah, a couple of reasons. The first is that there have been some really important modernizations and service delivery, new participants have been able to get certified and existing participants have been able to get recertified remotely on the program by phone or by video appointment where previously mom might have had to take time off from work, take kids out of daycare, or go into a clinic in person. And that’s time that often busy parents don’t have.
Ali Rogin:But as you pointed out to me, this is a request that was made by the National WIC Association back in 2017 so well before the COVID-19 pandemic?
Nell Menefee-Libey:Yes, correct. WIC food package is based on us independent recommendations from a panel of nutrition scientists, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. They recommended that mixed fruit and vegetable benefit be expanded in 2017. So that’s something that we’ve been asking for quite a few years. And we were happy to see Congress deliver on and 2021.
Ali Rogin:Now in terms of the debate happening in Congress right now, a lot of Republicans have seen reducing that fruit and vegetable credit as a way to, in their view course correct, from expansions of some programs that took place during the public health emergency. Here’s what one member of Congress Andy Harris had to say during the congressional debate over funding levels.
Rep. Andy Harris (R) Maryland:We must work to right size programs, especially since the pandemic is over. And President Biden has ended the public health emergency last month. And this is why we’re returning the WIC cash value voucher benefits to a normal sustainable inflation adjusted funding level.
Ali Rogin:What’s your response to that?
Nell Menefee-Libey:The WIC benefit is pretty modest. It’s not intended to supply a family’s entire grocery budget for the month. And even at those inflated levels or adjusted up levels, the fruit and vegetable benefit only supplies half of what’s recommended for consumption per month. We have seen important payoffs in the nutrition outcomes as a result of those higher issuance levels.We’ve seen a quarter cup increase in consumption of fruits and vegetables per day among WIC enrolled toddlers, you’re a new mom, you know, how hard it is to get kiddos to eat their fruits and vegetables. So that’s a big deal. I think that these are important gains in public health, it’s a worst a worthwhile investment in our nation’s children.And I think the idea that these are our pandemic programs that need to be right size is overlooking that these are recommendations stemming from an independent panel that met in 2017 to talk about how to make the most of WIC’s benefit.
Ali Rogin:Now a lot of your job these days is spent talking to lawmakers telling them about this program, what are you hearing from them?
Nell Menefee-Libey:We are fortunate that WIC is a program that has enjoyed long standing bipartisan support in Congress. There has been an agreement for nearly 30 years to provide the program with the resources necessary to serve every eligible individual who walks in the door and asks to receive WIC services.But the proposals that are currently being considered by Congress do not provide resources necessary to serve the projected nearly 7 million participants who we expect will participate in the program in 2024.
Ali Rogin:Now, if WIC funding does get cut in any way or not expanded to the levels that President Biden is now requesting, how is that going to affect the state agencies that administer these funds?
Nell Menefee-Libey:Yeah, unfortunately, state agencies would be in a position of having to turn away folks who would otherwise be eligible to receive WIC services. The first participants that we would see fall off of the program would be non-breastfeeding, new moms in the middle of a national maternal health crisis. And older children who are getting ready to start kindergarten, we want to make sure in the best possible position to be doing that.WIC hasn’t had to send families to wait lists since 1997. And the gains in participation that we’ve seen in the last couple of years are really hard won, that is the result of good work being done on the state and local level, to keep more families engaged with the program.And we don’t want to see folks turn away from the program because we know that once they fall off, it’s really hard to get them back. Congress needs to sustain these investments so that WIC is reaching all of the families who who would benefit from its vital nutrition services
Ali Rogin:Nell Menefee-Libey with the National WIC Association. Thank you so much for your time.
Nell Menefee-Libey:Thanks for having me, Ali.

. . .

September 27, 2023.

The following is a statement from The White House Office of Public Engagement on the one year anniversary of The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health:

“One year ago on September 28, 2022, President Biden hosted the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in over a half century, released a National Strategy, and announced over $8 billion of external commitments to achieve his bold goal of ending hunger and reducing diet-related disease by 2030 – all while closing disparities among the communities that are impacted most.

The White House Conference brought together Americans from all corners of the country and ignited efforts across all sectors of society – the government, activists, philanthropy, the private sector, and everyday Americans – to work in unison to tackle hunger and diet-related diseases.

The Biden-Harris Administration is playing its part and has already made great strides in implementing the National Strategy over the past year. For example, the Administration has:

Worked with Congress to enact a bipartisan, permanent nationwide Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children Program (Summer EBT) and non-congregate meal options for children in rural areas.
Approved ground-breaking Medicaid section 1115 demonstration initiatives in Massachusetts, Oregon, Arizona, and Arkansas that seek to address unmet social needs by testing coverage of services such as evidenced-based nutritional assistance and medically tailored meals.
Opened a Request for Information on Food Is Medicine Research Opportunities.
Issued proposed rules to make school meals even healthier and expand access to free meals to more students; remove barriers to use WIC online and update nutrition standards for the WIC food package; and update when a food package can claim it is “healthy.
Issued proposed rules that would reduce sodium in the food supply and update the criteria for when foods and beverages can use the claim “healthy” on their packaging.
Taken steps to inform the development of a potential front-of-package label for foods and beverages
Expanded Food is Medicine programs at VA health care facilities and launched the Produce Prescription Pilot Program in the Indian Health Service

It has also been incredible to see the work being done by Americans from all sectors to address hunger and diet-related disease. Building off of the first round of commitments, we look forward to lifting up additional commitments being made through the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities this fall.

To mark the one-year anniversary of the Conference, we encourage your organization to lift up the important work that you are doing to end hunger and address diet-related disease through your social media accounts. Be sure to use #WHConfHungerHealth and tag @WhiteHouse or @POTUS!”