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Researchers from The Possibilities Project and Clinical Futures at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed, implemented and successfully tested a nutrition screener to improve access to healthy resources for families eligible for federally-funded food benefits. The findings were published this week in the journal Annals of Family Medicine . Many low-income families rely on the federally-funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for nutritional support, and both programs have been linked to improved health outcomes and decreased health care costs .

However, many eligible families do not receive these program benefits because of the complex application and enrollment process. "Prior studies at CHOP show that 50% of people who are eligible for services like WIC might not actually be taking advantage of them," said study co-author George Dalembert, MD, Associate Director of the Center for Health Equity at CHOP. The Possibilities Project at CHOP aims to design innovative strategies and implement new ideas to better serve patients.



In this study, to help eligible families navigate this system, researchers designed and tested a standardized process for linking families to WIC and SNAP during pediatric primary care visits. This nutrition screener was a tablet-based questionnaire that asked eligible families whether they were interested in help applying for WIC or SNAP.

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