Remote WIC access boosts family retention more than benefit increases, study finds

A new study reveals that simplifying access through remote services significantly improves WIC retention among families, overshadowing the impact of increased fruit and vegetable benefits. The findings highlight the importance of making remote options permanent to support low-income families effectively.

Families were more likely to stay enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children after the programme made remote access easier, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. The research suggests that removing the need for repeated in-person visits mattered more for retention than increasing the value of fruit and vegetable benefits alone, a finding with clear implications for how WIC is delivered to young children and their caregivers.

WIC, which supports low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants and young children with food assistance, nutrition education and referrals to health services, reaches millions of families nationwide. Yet participation typically falls as children get older. Researchers said the drop is tied to practical hurdles such as proving eligibility again and again, finding time away from work, arranging transport and childcare, and navigating the benefit system itself. The study found that once remote services were introduced during the pandemic, that downward trend in retention began to reverse.

The analysis used six years of Massachusetts WIC administrative data covering 238,482 children and applied an interrupted time-series design to examine policy changes introduced during the pandemic. Before the shift to remote services, retention had been edging down steadily. In March 2020, retention was still very high among infants, but it was markedly lower among older children, especially those nearing age four. After remote services began, retention improved among children aged 12 to 47 months, while the youngest group was already holding steady and did not change in a statistically meaningful way.

By contrast, the later increase in the cash-value benefit for fruits and vegetables did not produce a broad further rise in retention. The benefit change did, however, coincide with small immediate gains in the combined measure of staying enrolled and using WIC food-package benefits among children aged 12 to 35 months. Separate reporting from nutrition groups shows that the cash-value benefit was raised temporarily in 2021 as part of pandemic-era federal aid, with support for fruit and vegetable purchases set at a higher monthly level than under the standard programme.

The study’s authors said the results strengthen the case for keeping remote services in place rather than treating them as a temporary emergency measure. They pointed to proposed legislation aimed at making remote nutrition services a permanent option. The findings also fit with earlier research showing that simpler benefit delivery, including the move from paper vouchers to electronic cards, has made WIC easier to use. Still, the authors noted important limits: the work focused on Massachusetts, lacked a comparison group and could not fully separate the effect of remote services from other pandemic-era changes affecting low-income families.