Toolkit: Increasing WIC Coverage Through Cross-Program Data Matching and Targeted Outreach

How to Use This Toolkit

Each of the nine topic areas in this toolkit includes background, practical planning tools, resources, and examples to guide users through the process of developing data-informed outreach. By briefly reviewing the planning tools in advance, you will be able to identify the colleagues you will need to involve in each step and determine how much time you will need to devote to each tool.

Completing this toolkit will help your team:

• Set project goals for increasing WIC participation and enrolling a greater share of adjunctively eligible families;
• Develop a comprehensive workplan for launching a data matching and targeted outreach initiative;
• Plan an evaluation that measures progress toward goals and can guide improvements over time; and
• Benefit from lessons learned in states that have matched Medicaid or SNAP data with WIC data to measure the enrollment gap and conduct targeted outreach.

While this toolkit will equip your team to implement data matching and targeted outreach to reach more families eligible for WIC, this particular outreach model is only one part of a broader strategy to connect underserved people to WIC. The model explained in this toolkit is effective at identifying eligible non-participants who are already enrolled in another program, such as Medicaid or SNAP; different types of outreach may be needed, however, to reach those who are not already connected to other benefits. Before embarking on this type of outreach, it is important to assess who is eligible for WIC but missing out. That assessment will help determine whether Medicaid and SNAP participants are a key group for outreach and which subsets of Medicaid and SNAP participants to focus on.

Context

This toolkit builds on growing interest from policymakers in ensuring that low-income families with young children receive the full package of supports for which they are eligible, which can reduce short-term hardship and put children on a healthier course for life. At the direction of Congress, the Department of Agriculture is developing state-level estimates of pregnant individuals, infants, and children under age 5 who are participating in Medicaid or SNAP but not WIC. States may wish to refine those estimates once they become available and use them to measure progress over time, identify underserved groups, or target outreach.

The toolkit is informed by recent state pilots conducted in Colorado, Massachusetts, Montana, and Virginia, where outreach strategies were tested through randomized control trials. In partnership with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and Benefits Data Trust (BDT), each of these states performed cross-program data matches between WIC and Medicaid, SNAP, and/or other means-tested programs and found large numbers of WIC-eligible non-participants. Evidence from the pilot evaluationsOpens in a new window indicates that targeted text outreach to adjunctively eligible families is a practical, sustainable strategy to improve WIC certification rates. BDT and CBPP used this information to develop a workshop series for seven additional states, during which the planning tools included in this toolkit were initially developed and then used by state WIC agencies.