Henry M Jackson Foundation (On Behalf of Uniformed Services University) WIC CIAO Project

The Henry M Jackson Foundation’s project aims to increase WIC enrollment and retention of military families with children up to age 5 at Fort Campbell, with a specific focus on active-duty service women.

To accomplish this, the Foundation will gather data and compile a comprehensive list of WIC eligible military families from a large military-specific database. In addition, they will hire staff, who will engage in multistep outreach efforts to connect with identified families, and will also strategically partner with Tennessee WIC State agency, Kentucky WIC State agency, and the Fort Campbell Pediatric Clinic to utilize pediatric health information from clinical appointments to renew WIC benefits, without the need for multiple in-person recertification appointments.

Throughout the process, military members will be directly involved in the project as part of an advisory board to oversee project processes and will participate in focus groups to understand barriers to WIC retention in military families.

This will be one of the first large scale projects to use military healthcare data to compile a list of likely WIC eligible military members and subsequently perform targeted outreach and assistance with enrollment.

With this project’s success and findings, other communities serving military families could adopt this model and start working towards increasing WIC enrollment for military members nationwide.