BY: CLARA BATES
Missouri Independent
Missourians receiving federal food assistance for low-income women and children will face fewer administrative hurdles to get benefits after the state this month modernized its system.
The Women, Infants and Children Program, known as WIC, for years required participants to physically visit an office to have their benefits loaded onto their cards — a requirement that sometimes hindered eligible Missourians from getting the food benefits at all.
But as of this month, the Department of Health and Senior Services has completed updates to allow participants to receive benefits remotely — transitioning to a system that has long been operated in nearly every other state.
WIC is a federal program providing supplemental food, nutrition education and referrals to health care to low-income pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, infants and children up to age 5 who are determined to be at nutritional risk.
The new WIC card technology in Missouri in effect as of May 1 “will improve the participants’ benefit issuance and redemption experience,” said Lisa Cox, spokesperson for Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which operates the program. “So we anticipate that participants may remain enrolled in WIC for a longer time, which could increase participation.”
Missouri’s rate of WIC participation has long been below the national average, though it’s improved in recent years. Some attributed Missouri’s administratively-challenging system to the low rate, especially during COVID, when the state had to continue requiring in-person issuance.
In 2022, only 41% of eligible Missourians were enrolled in WIC, and the national average was 54%. As of April, Cox said, there were 95,401 Missourians participating in WIC.
As of 2022, Missouri was one of just nine states which used a WIC system that required participants to bring their benefits cards to the local agency office when loading benefits — what’s called an “offline” system for reloading benefits.
Participants on the offline system dealt with transportation and socioeconomic barriers to accessing in-person benefits.\
“I have to request off work just to come load the card,” one mother told The Independent.
The modernization effort in effect this month allows the state to operate an “online” system capable of remotely and automatically reloading benefits.
Cox previously said the reason Missouri elected to operate an offline system was based on an analysis conducted roughly a decade ago.
In 2020, “it became apparent that an online system would be more user friendly,” Cox previously said, but “Missouri WIC was unable to change that decision mid-implementation.”
There are other advantages to the modernization, Cox said in a press release, designed to make it easier for participants to track their benefits and for retailers to receive their reimbursement.