NWICA

NWA has created a central location to help you track and organize your advocacy efforts.

Be a Voice for WIC!

Be a voice for the work that you do and the families that you serve in order to help protect WIC from devastating budget cuts that will go into effect in March 2013 if Congress fails to agree to an alternative strategy to reduce the national debt. These budget cuts are known as sequestration. If Congress is able to reach an alternative deal to reduce the federal debt by March 2013, then sequestration will not occur. If they are unable to reach a deal in time, sequestration will occur and WIC will receive an 5.1% cut, or the equivalent of removing 600,000 mothers and young children from the program, nationally.

The President and Congressional leaders have signaled that they intend to find informed spending cuts and revenue to avoid sequestration. But, it is up to us to motivate them to follow through with their intentions and protect WIC. As passionate service providers, you all are important voices for WIC, speaking to the nutrition and breastfeeding successes of the program and representing the millions of families served by the program. Congress needs to hear from you why WIC is so important to the communities that they represent and the real human consequences of cutting funding from the program.

What you can do:

Communicate the following message to your Senators and Representative in Congress:

WIC helps my community by ____________ (e.g. serving X number of at-risk mothers and young children, helping them access healthy nutrition information, nutritious foods, etc.) Cutting funding from WIC would mean____________ for my community.

How NWA can help you:

View the downloads to the right to find:

• How to communicate with policymakers (calling, writing, meeting, hosting an event)
• What sequestration is and how it would impact caseload and clinic services in each state
• WIC Key messages and talking points for communicating with policymakers and media
• The difference between advocating and lobbying
• Additional documents about how WIC is an efficient and effective program, plays an important role in the larger public health framework, and provides a significant return on investment for the country

Please join your colleagues across the nation in being a voice for WIC! Please contact Martelle Esposito, NWA Public Policy Nutritionist, at mesposito [at] nwica [dot] org or 202-232-5492 with any questions about how to be a voice for WIC.