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Strengthen the Evidence for Maternal and Child Health Programs

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Established Evidence Results

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Below are articles that support specific interventions to advance MCH National Performance Measures (NPMs) and Standardized Measures (SMs). Most interventions contain multiple components as part of a coordinated strategy/approach.

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Displaying records 1 through 2 (2 total).

Kogan, K., Anand, P., Gallo, S., & Cuellar, A. E. (2023). A Quasi-Experimental Assessment of the Effect of the 2009 WIC Food Package Revisions on Breastfeeding Outcomes. Nutrients, 15(2), 414.

Evidence Rating: Emerging

Intervention Components (click on component to see a list of all articles that use that intervention): WIC Food Package Change, STATE-BASED, Policy/Guideline (National), NATIONALLY-BASED,

Intervention Description: The 2009 WIC food package revisions were intended to incentivize breastfeeding among the WIC population. To examine the effectiveness of this policy change, we estimated an intent-to-treat regression-adjusted difference-in-difference model with propensity score weighting, an approach that allowed us to control for both secular trends in breastfeeding and selection bias.

Intervention Results: We observed significant increases in infants that were ever breastfed in both the treatment group (10 percentage points; p < 0.01) and the control group (15 percentage points; p < 0.05); however, we did not find evidence that the difference between the two groups was statistically significant, suggesting that the 2009 revisions may not have had an effect on any of these breastfeeding outcomes.

Conclusion: Our study did not find evidence that the 2009 WIC food package revisions had an effect on ever breastfeeding, breastfeeding through 6 months, or exclusively breastfeeding through 6 months among a sample of infants eligible for WIC based on household income. Any positive effects observed in this study and prior studies that assessed this relationship may be reflections of the upward trends in breastfeeding rates that occurred in the U.S. before and after the implementation of the revisions.

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Pulvera, R., Collin, D. F., & Hamad, R. (2022). The effect of the 2009 WIC revision on maternal and child health: A quasi‐experimental study. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 36(6), 851-860.

Evidence Rating: Emerging

Intervention Components (click on component to see a list of all articles that use that intervention): WIC Food Package Change, STATE-BASED, Policy/Guideline (National), NATIONALLY-BASED,

Intervention Description: To investigate the impact of the revised WIC program on maternal and child health in a large, multi-state data set.

Intervention Results: The main analysis included 331,946 mother-infant dyads. WIC recipients were more likely to be younger, Black or Hispanic/Latina, unmarried, and of greater parity. The revised WIC program was associated with reduced likelihood of more-than-recommended GWG (−1.29% points, 95% confidence interval [CI] −2.03, −0.56) and increased likelihood of ever breast fed (1.18% points, 95% CI 0.28, 2.08). We also identified heterogeneous effects on GWG, with more pronounced associations among women 35 and older. There were no associations with foetal growth.

Conclusion: The revised WIC program was associated with improvements in women's gestational weight gain and infant breast feeding.

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The MCH Digital Library is one of six special collections at Geogetown University, the nation's oldest Jesuit institution of higher education. It is supported in part by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under award number U02MC31613, MCH Advanced Education Policy with an award of $700,000/year. The library is also supported through foundation and univerity funding. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.