FOOD RESEARCH & ACTION CENTER INC

1. Strengthen the federal nutrition programs to ensure they provide sufficient and dignified access to nutrition to individuals and families with low-incomes in the U.S.
2. Guarantee that federal nutrition program implementation at the federal, state, and local levels maximizes available benefits.
3. Support policies and programs that reduce poverty and other root causes of hunger.
4. Reduce the racial hunger gap by embedding equity in the Federal Nutrition Assistance Programs.
5. Build a national commitment in support of just and effective anti-hunger policies.

FRAC engages in a broad range of strategies at the national, state, and local levels to strengthen and improve participation and benefits in the federal nutrition programs, including: policy analysis; research; advocacy; lobbying; outreach; dissemination of best practices and other materials; annual conferences, webinars, and other training opportunities; intensive technical assistance to state and local groups and public and private non-profit service providers; public education; messaging; work with media and digital media ; coalition building; regranted funding; and similar work. As a key part of this work, FRAC informs, mobilizes, and empowers a network of national, state, and local organizations and policymakers.

For many years FRAC has been the epicenter of thought leadership, technical assistance, training, information dissemination, policy analysis, research, and coalition-building involving the federal nutrition programs. FRAC’s position in the anti-poverty and anti-hunger sphere is unique in many respects. Focusing on public programs, we integrate national, state, and local anti-hunger efforts into a comprehensive strategy and work in a bipartisan manner to shore up support for program expansion and improvements.

FRAC staff have decades of experience working on these efforts and are acknowledged experts and leaders on the workings of the federal nutrition programs. FRAC senior staff bring to bear their deep knowledge and wealth of experience to the leadership roles they serve in numerous leading coalitions and collaborations, including the Breakfast for Learning Education Alliance, the Child Nutrition Forum, the Coalition on Human Needs, the eGovernment Payments Council, the Hunger Vital Sign Community of Practice, the National CACFP Forum, the National Academy of Medicine Roundtable on Obesity Solutions, and the Protecting Immigrant Families Campaign

FRAC has worked to expand access to, participation in, and benefits in the full range of nutrition programs, and to protect and improve nutrition quality in the programs as the means to address the complex set of problems of hunger, poverty, and poor health. This approach by FRAC has come to define the field of work.

In 2020, FRAC advocated for the availability, adoption, and extension of waivers and flexibilities that expanded access to and outreach for the federal nutrition programs—particularly providing remote services for WIC and SNAP and non-congregate feeding options for schools, out-of-school time providers, and child care programs.

The federal nutrition programs have responded as intended to the economic crisis, and program participation reflects that. SNAP and WIC are countercyclical and expanded in their reach during economic decline. School meals, out-of-school time meals, and child care food quickly had to be reconceptualized to account for school closures and social distancing; participation in grab-and-go meals was dramatically lower than in-person participation had been. Pandemic EBT, which FRAC helped create and implement nationwide, helped fill the gap for families.

FRAC and our partners also protected the structure of the federal nutrition programs, particularly SNAP, from harmful administrative changes. Three harmful proposed SNAP rule changes to Categorical Eligibility, Heat and Eat, and time limits for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWD) were paused during the pandemic and ultimately withdrawn. Resistance to these negative proposals succeeded because of widespread bipartisan and multi-sector opposition that FRAC continues to sustain, and because of widespread media criticism FRAC helped generate. FRAC’s research, analyses, strategic leadership, coalition building, and communications work all played an essential role.

While the “public charge” rule that threatens immigrants’ ability to access safety net benefits without adverse immigration consequences went into effect for a year, it recently was permanently blocked nationwide. FRAC and our partners have worked, and will continue, to mitigate the chilling effect on program participation.