The need as indicated by stakeholders

Almost 13% of households in the United States (US) participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2021 (USDA, 2023). While SNAP has been shown to improve food security (Carlson & Keith-Kennings, 2018), low-income Americans, including SNAP participants, spend less on fruits and vegetables (Blisard, Stewart, & Jolliffe, 2004) and have higher rates of obesity and diet-related diseases than higher-income Americans (Khullar and Chokshi, 2018). To encourage SNAP participants to purchase healthier foods, policies have been proposed to either restrict SNAP benefits to healthier foods or to provide incentives to purchase healthier foods (Harnack et al., 2016). Current policy has focused on incentives, with the implementation of federal programs such as the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) and the Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives (HFMI) program, as well as local initiatives such as North Carolina’s Healthy Opportunity Pilots program. Funding for these SNAP nutrition incentive programs has totaled well over $100 million from the federal government alone.

The importance of the work

Current research on incentives operating in conjunction with the SNAP program has focused on associations between program participation and fruit and vegetable consumption (e.g. Olsho et al. 2016; Rummo et al. 2019). Some work also has looked at barriers to accessing these incentive programs (e.g. Garner et al. 2020). The effectiveness of these incentive programs depends on how consumers interact with them, and a great deal is not known about consumer responses to individual programs. Even less is known about how SNAP consumers react to different modalities of offering incentives, and benefits and drawbacks of varying programmatic choices. Comparing modalities and programmatic choices involve working across incentive projects.

Though the effectiveness and success of these SNAP nutrition incentive programs depend on creating cross-project and cross-institution knowledge, current research on SNAP nutrition incentive programs is largely siloed, happening on a project-specific basis by researchers. In addition, SNAP nutrition incentive researchers often come from different fields. Some SNAP nutrition incentive researchers are nutrition and public health professionals, while others are economists or agricultural economists. Beyond having different approaches to research, each discipline has its own annual conferences and journals, constraining collaboration and sharing of ideas. Different conferences make it difficult for economists doing research into SNAP nutrition incentive programs to learn from nutrition and public health professionals, and vice versa. Thus, there is a need for greater cross-project and cross-field collaboration among SNAP nutrition incentive researchers. Without a multistate effort, research will remain siloed and less will be known about effects of these SNAP nutrition incentive programs and how to maximize their impact.

In response to the need for a broader effort, and to facilitate cross-project and cross-field learning, Auburn University’s Hunger Solutions Institute (HSI) convened an in-person conference for researchers leading projects investigating SNAP nutrition incentive programs Funded by a USDA conference grant (USDA GRANT # G00016950), the conference convened researchers working on GusNIP projects – either formally using their roles as evaluators or less formally as collaborators – and researchers working on HFMI and other local SNAP nutrition incentive programs. Researchers from a variety of fields were invited to participate, including nutrition, public health, and agricultural economics. Seventeen researchers attended to present current research projects and discuss collaboration. Additionally, many others who were invited but could not come expressed interest in attending such a workshop and collaborating in the future. Of the researchers who attended, many left positive feedback and expressed interest in attending the workshop yearly or biennially. Attendees also communicated the need for more opportunities to network and collaborate on future SNAP nutrition incentive projects.

Technical feasibility of the research

Current research on SNAP nutrition incentive programs uses an array of qualitative and quantitative research methods. This project will use appropriate statistical and other methods to analyze data generated.

Advantages of doing the work as a multistate effort

The multistate effort will enable researchers across disciplines and institutions to collaborate and learn from each other. We anticipate participants from the disciplines of agricultural economics, nutrition, public health, and other relevant disciplines. In addition, we anticipate participants to include researchers working as university faculty members, postdoctoral researchers, predoctoral researchers, and Extension staff. Participants will likely be from land grant institutions and other state universities, historically black colleges and universities, private universities, and other entities such as food retailers and nongovernmental organizations.

Likely impacts

Research developed through this multistate project will 1) measure the relationship between SNAP incentive program participation and individual/household outcomes, 2) measure how different programmatic decisions impact household participation and the effectiveness and efficiency of the program, and 3) measure how nutrition incentive programs impact food retailers, agribusiness entities, and farmers. These findings will be used by a number of different stakeholders. Retailers and nongovernmental organizations implementing incentive programs will learn best practices and be able to better serve SNAP households. Understanding who does and does not use SNAP nutrition incentive programs will make outreach efforts by community members more effective. Understanding how these programs impact retailers, agribusiness, and farmers will enable policy stakeholders to appropriately decide funding allocations for SNAP nutrition incentive programs. Grant administrators in the government will be able to better design the parameters of future funding calls for SNAP nutrition incentive programs. Research on SNAP incentive programs will thus provide insight into ways to improve diets among a large portion of the U.S. population, and this understanding can in turn inform improvements in U.S. diets for everyone.