WIC Achieves the Goals of Good Health and Nutrition for Families

As the nation’s premier public health nutrition program, The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) provides the competitive edge that will give our nation’s future leaders a fair start in life.

WIC is a short-term intervention program designed to influence lifetime nutrition and health behaviors in a targeted, high-risk population. WIC requires that participant's income level has to be less than or equal to 185% of the poverty level and at least one nutrition risk has to be documented. WIC provides:

  • Quality nutrition education and services
  • Breastfeeding promotion and education
  • A monthly food prescription (package)
  • Access to maternal, prenatal and pediatric health-care services

In 2012, WIC served more nearly 9 million participants each month, through 10,000 clinics nationwide, which included:

  • 890,000 pregnant women
  • 588,000 breastfeeding women
  • 615,000 postpartum women
  • 2.1 million infants
  • 4.7 million children

To better understand the critical role WIC plays in building a better future for America’s children, please download WIC for a Healthier, Stronger America which contains additional information and related charts.

A PDF of the report is located under Downloads to the right of this page.