Blogs

The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture encourage public participation in the committee’s review process.

In Colorado, Adams and Denver counties are taking innovative approaches to co-located health and human services operations.

The HHS and USDA will host the second full meeting of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on May 10, 2023. The meeting will be livestreamed for public viewing.

Over the course of three days in MI, Stacy Dean, Deputy Under Secretary for FNS, spoke at "The State of Our Plate" convening, met with school food service professionals, and attended a summit for healthcare professionals, insurers, federal, state, and local government officials.

The Fondy Farmers Market is Milwaukee's 105-year-old, largest, and the first farmers market in Wisconsin to accept SNAP. The market is run by Fondy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to healthy, local food and economic opportunity across the greater Milwaukee area and is an impressive model in so many ways.

Greeley-Evans School District 6 in northern Colorado was honored and excited to welcome Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to Maplewood Elementary School on March 22. The Secretary and visitors were able to see just one school of more than 30 in District 6 that provide essential health and nutrition programs to more than 22,000 students every day.

Federal nutrition programs do more than give kids food to eat. They teach children about the importance of nutrition and help them develop healthy habits.

Food industry partners play a crucial role in producing, procuring and delivering food for our school meal programs. Despite the challenges that industry and school food service operators have encountered over the past few years, they have continued delivering food and serving nutritious meals to tens of millions of children every day.

USDA FNS supports indigenous health and tribal sovereignty through FDPIR Self-Determination Demonstration Projects. The Alaska Native Health Consortium, operates a FDPIR self-determination demonstration project that provides foods to 18 tribes across Alaska.

The School Breakfast Program is one of the most nutritious and tasty meals children eat each day.

The Urban School Food Alliance winter meeting in Los Angeles, California included FNS sessions focused on child nutrition programs. Participants had the opportunity to ask questions about the child nutrition programs they administer, including the recent updates.

Project Bread, a Massachusetts nonprofit focused on permanently solving food insecurity, teamed up with MassHealth to pilot the Flexible Services Program, to bolster food security and meet nutritional needs from birth throughout childhood and beyond, improving health outcomes at every stage of life. Since April 2020, over 7,000 MassHealth members with complex health issues were given an array of food resources.

Pronto, muchos hogares recipientes del programa de nutrición de SNAP (también conocido como cupones de alimentos) verán un cambio en la cantidad de beneficios que reciben cada mes. Esto se debe a que el aumento temporal de beneficios que empezó a ofrecerse a raíz de la pandemia, llamado “Asignación de Emergencia”, será discontinuado. 

USDA’s summer meal programs – the Summer Food Service Program and Seamless Summer Option – reduce food and nutrition insecurity and help ensure kids are healthy and ready to learn when they return to school in the fall.

On Feb.9 and 10, the newly announced 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee convened for its first official meeting. Comprised of 20 nationally recognized science and nutrition experts, the Committee will provide independent, science-based advice and recommendations to be considered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and USDA in the development of the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

On Jan. 19, 2023, USDA participated in the first of seven regional summits focused on strengthening the intersections between healthcare and nutrition security. These regional summits build on USDA’s first-ever National Nutrition Security and Healthcare Summit held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022. Together, the national and regional summits are leveraging the momentum of the White House Conference’s corresponding National Strategy that aims to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, and reduce diet-related diseases and disparities.

Soon, many SNAP households will experience a change to their benefit amounts as the temporary pandemic-related boost to SNAP benefits, known as emergency allotments, come to an end. More than 41 million Americans receive food-buying benefits through SNAP. They rely on these benefits to put food on the table each month. That’s why it’s so important they know what’s happening to their benefits – and when – so they can plan for themselves and their families.

TEFAP Reach and Resiliency – Round 1 grants are making an impact in communities across the nation. The Food Bank of Lincoln has leveraged Reach and Resiliency sub-grant funding to identify underserved areas and to implement strategies to increase TEFAP access in those areas. In some cases, the strategies were as simple as increasing the frequency of deliveries to specific communities to ensure that existing TEFAP resources were being equitably distributed.

For the 2025 DGAs, USDA and HHS sought an advisory committee that would be reflective of the full diversity within the United States, with the understanding that our backgrounds can affect our nutritional needs. The broader composition of the committee will ensure the resulting guidelines reflect the nutritional and cultural needs of all Americans.

Last month, 350 SNAP E&T state agencies and other partners from across the country gathered for the 2022 SNAP E&T National Forum. This year’s National Forum included 32 sessions covering a diversity of topics, such as SNAP E&T policy, building E&T programs in rural communities, and using a trauma-informed and anti-racist lens to improve E&T programs.