Resource Library

WIC is an important resource for families with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. WIC waivers and enhancements during the pandemic have simultaneously removed access barriers and increased the value of participating in WIC, resulting in overall increases in program participation. In February 2022, WIC reached 6.2 million participants, a 1.2 percent increase from February 2020. Learn more in FRAC’s latest report, WIC During COVID-19: Participation and Benefit Redemption Since the Onset of the Pandemic. 

In spring 2020, millions of students were either out of school or learning remotely. Pandemic EBT helped to fill the nutritional gap left by lack of access to school meals and had a large impact on addressing food insecurity.

FRAC’s latest Pandemic EBT report draws on a survey sent to all state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program directors to highlight the critical importance of this program for children, families, and school nutrition programs. It then takes lessons learned reported by states to make policy recommendations for a permanent nationwide Summer EBT Program and identifies best practices to support the implementation.

FRAC’s Community Eligibility: The Key to Hunger-Free Schools, School Year 2021–2022 report analyzes community eligibility adoption–nationally and for each state and the District of Columbia–in the 2021–2022 school year.

This report highlights the role that school nutrition waivers have played in supporting school nutrition operations and access to school meals, the importance of extending the waivers through the 2022–2023 school year, and the path forward to ensure all children have access to the nutritious school meals they need to learn and thrive. 

Leveraging the federal nutrition programs is a key strategy to help reduce and prevent food insecurity effectively and equitably. In this brief, a supplement to Hunger and Its Solutions in New Jersey: Landscape Analysis of Current Initiatives, Recommended Action, and Emerging Opportunities for Further Investment, FRAC provides further information on the landscape of the federal nutrition programs in New Jersey. 

Produced with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this report evaluates food insecurity in New Jersey and proposes actionable recommendations to eliminate hunger across the state.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound impacts across food and early care and education (ECE) systems that has exacerbated inequities and racial injustices in food, health, and education. While severely devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis, the ECE sector and food and agriculture systems are ripe with opportunity to build back with greater equity and resiliency. Farm to early care and education (farm to ECE) can be a component of building back better.

This report sheds light on the importance of the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for older adults and the positive impacts of the temporary increase in SNAP benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. SNAP — the nation’s first defense against hunger — is vital to participants’ food security, nutrition, and health, and to the economy.

FRAC’s 2022 School Breakfast and School Lunch Report found student participation in school breakfast and lunch dropped dramatically across the country when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and school nutrition programs are still recovering.

Native American communities remain resilient in the face of disproportionately high rates of poverty, hunger, unemployment, and poor health, both before and during COVID19. For American Indian and Alaska Native communities, disparities in food insecurity are a result of the structural racism originating with colonization and continuing to the present.

The Afterschool Nutrition Programs offered an important opportunity to combat hunger during the 2020–2021 school year as communities and families continued to feel the educational, health, and economic impacts of COVID-19. Read the 2021 report to learn more.

The health and economic crises brought on by the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has made the federal nutrition programs more important than ever. A record number of people in America do not have enough to eat, and it is likely that the economic recovery for families who struggle to put food on the table will take years. Recovery will be particularly challenging for those groups that have suffered disproportionate harm from COVID-19. Unlike differences, inequities are the result of the unfair distribution of resources due to structural factors. The goals of this review are to examine the connections between hunger, poverty, health, and equity during COVID-19, and to discuss the role of the federal nutrition programs in the recovery from the pandemic. This white paper begins with the linkages between hunger, poverty, and health during COVID-19. It then details how COVID-19 has exacerbated disparities that predated the pandemic due to systemic injustices. The paper follows with a review of new research on how the federal nutrition programs reduce hunger, poverty, and health, including their efficacy during the pandemic. This paper concludes with policy recommendations to leverage the federal nutrition programs for a robust and equitable recovery.

The School Nutrition Programs are vital tools for combating childhood hunger, improving children’s health, and supporting academic achievement. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role of school meals in alleviating childhood food insecurity while also demonstrating the value of offering school meals at no charge to all students. In order to overcome the educational, health, and economic impacts of the pandemic on children and families, and the financial challenges created by the pandemic for school nutrition departments, Healthy School Meals for All should remain the new normal for all schools across the country. This brief provides a case for why.

This report explores the impact of COVID-19 on access to meals and snacks when schools shuttered during the pandemic by analyzing March, April, and May 2020 meal service data for the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which includes the meals and snacks served through the Seamless Summer Option, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Afterschool Supper and Snack Programs through the Child and Adult Care Food Program, compared to participation in SBP and NSLP, and the Afterschool Supper and Snack Programs during the same months in 2019. For an in-depth look at April 2020, please see the Food Research & Action Center’s April 2020: A Snapshot of Participation During COVID-19.

WIC is an important resource during COVID-19. This brief details the change in WIC participation and food costs during the first full year of COVID-19 (March 2020 through February 2021).