About the Project
Between 2018 and 2023, HPRIL partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service working to answer the question: Will eligible families participate in WIC longer if we improve services with new tools, more specifically will eligible children come back to WIC for recertification within 14 months (retention)?
HPRIL funded and provided support to five local WIC agency projects over an 18-month time period. Projects focused primarily on using WIC management information systems (MIS), WIC’s participant information databases, to help identify children at risk for not returning to the program, identify service gaps, and evaluate the impact of selected innovative tools on retention. Collectively, the goal was to effectively demonstrate how local agencies could use existing WIC data collection and monitoring tools to target and monitor child retention efforts, a practice that can be scaled nationally.
These agencies were chosen through a competitive RFP process, where HPRIL provided financial assistance to funded agencies for strengthening their implementation and evaluation plans and providing technical assistance and building local agency capacities throughout the project. HPRIL also evaluated impacts across all the projects, compiling training and technical assistance materials for other local WIC agencies to utilize beyond the project.
Funded Projects
Through a competitive RFP process, HPRIL selected five local WIC agencies with which to partner: Pima County Health Department in Arizona; Yavapai County Health Department in Arizona; Miami-Dade WIC in Florida; Cabarrus Health Alliance in North Carolina; and Public Health Solutions in New York. These five agencies submitted proposals for projects aimed at implementing innovative clinical and marketing tools with the end goal of improving child retention rates for children ages 1-4 years old. In addition to implementing the innovative tools, each agency was also tasked with integrating a collection of customer service best practice activities into their clinic operations.
The winning proposals effectively demonstrated how the local agencies would use their management information systems (MIS) to help identify groups at risk for not recertifying within 14 months, identify gaps in service, and evaluate the impact of their chosen intervention on retention. Another important criterion was geographic and population diversity.
In September 2019, HPRIL began funding and providing training and technical assistance to the five selected agencies. The local agency projects concluded in 2023.
For more details on each of these projects, please see their final reports:
WIC Funded Projects - Final Reports
Yavapai County, AZ : WIC in a Click Final Report
Pima County, AZ : WICBuzz In the Time of Texting
Miami-Dade County, FL: WIC HPRIL Grant Final Report
Cabarrus Health Alliance, NC: An Innovative Online Appointment System to Enhance WIC Services