HealhFirst Network
216 South 3rd Avenue
Wausau, WI 54401
(800) 246-5743

Transcription is for SEO purposes only

From expectations to conversations. We offer all the services you would expect health first network provides quality confidential reproductive health care, education, and nutrition counseling care and what made you decide you want to get into WIC just like public health, public health nutrition is really where I as a dietitian because all the counselors are dietitians, public health nutrition is something where you can really see the impact of what you do, didn't even realize there is any motion on that note to school. One of the cool things about the WIC program is that you get to see kids grow and develop over the course of time as a dietitian in the hospital or clinic settings you see people one or two times and you don't get to develop that relationship with the families like we do here WIC stands for women infant and children and WIC is a supplemental food and nutrition program for pregnant moms new moms and young children where families meet certain qualifying criteria to be eligible for the program once they're determined to be eligible, besides getting a lot of nutrition education and support we provide supplemental food, healthy supplemental foods like juice, cereal, eggs, peanut butter, milk and assortment of things and a lot of nutrition education and breast-feeding support as well as referrals and information about other resources within the community that might benefit that family. I know the education side of it is pretty amazing. I don't usually show this but when my twins are born, we participated in work we were able to live and stay in her house and you know because you we are twins and having twins on top of two other children, you know it was it was a big expense and to have WIC there to help out was a godsend was life saving your example is in exactly the kind of family that we really really want to try to help the difference between WIC and some of the other supplemental programs like food share is that our income cut off goes quite a bit higher then the other programs that are out there and so were really designed to help those struggling young families where you working but maybe child care expenses has exceeded what it's worth, and so you choose to have one parent stay home will then how do you get groceries and how do you pay your bills and the benefit that the families receive per person. It's roughly right around $70 for a child durum woman that they received. If you were to purchase all the foods that you're able to for a babysitter getting formula that's over $100 a month per child. It's a supplemental program but it adds up. And if we can help families get their basics then their resources can go to pay for other bills like diapers or gas in the car or electric bills or things like that that don't go away just because you'd one parent decided to stay home and what kind of items does WIC provide two-family good question. If you're a pregnant woman. Let's use that as an example, you would receive a quantity of food per month or you would be able to purchase that in the grocery store you would get 5 1/2 gallons of milk, a dozen eggs three containers of juice, a jar of peanut butter, a pound of dried beans or four cans of the dried beans that are cooked a loaf of bread 36 ounces of cereal now. We can also provide for people that want we can substitute out. We can provide some yogurt in place of some of the milk and cheese is another choice. If you're a child you get the same types of foods only a little different quantities babies are able to get those that are not breast-fed, or those that are getting supplemental formula. So say a mom is breast-feeding but she works out and is enabled to save enough of her milk that her baby is able to get enough to eat. Then we can be flexible and we provide some Formula One amount still get some benefits after the baby turns six months they're able to get some baby foods and then infant cereals as well. The foods that families are allowed to purchase from us. What happens is we have a very strict guideline that the USDA has set for us to provide nutrients for our families and every three years. All the foods that are available in the grocery store get looked at to see if they would qualify to meet our standards. Like for example the cereals that you can get from us are cereals that have to have a lot of iron in them. Not much sugar in them and be whole-grain if you think about examples of that. That would be something not like Lucky charms or Froot Loops. We also are able to provide fruits and vegetables for families. We give the dollar amount per month per individual. So if you're a child you get nine dollars worth of fruits and vegetables a month and women get $11 worth of fruits and vegetables a month so you can get any in the fruits and vegetables can be fresh but as you know how are growing season is so short in the middle of winter. You may not want to buy all fresh because they just don't taste so good then but so you can get fresh frozen or canned plain fruits and vegetables with your WIC benefit, and that's on the standard WIC now in the summer we do something really cool. We are able to provide farmer market checks for our families and what that is is in the summer, we provide per family $30 worth of the special farmer market checks. They take those to the local farmers market and purchase Wisconsin room fruits and vegetables get our organization on Monday afternoons in our parking lot. We have a farmers market, so it's a really neat connection where families can come if they happen to come on Monday afternoon to pick up the farmer market checks they can go right into our parking lot and purchase fruits that are grown here in Wisconsin that's instant gratification. Fiber is so cool. It is just so cool that we have this going now and families they that utilize the farmer market checks just love them so that age group for workers from birth to five till five. The history behind the five-year-old cut off is kinda interesting in that WIC program was designed in the late 60s early 70s when our country had a surplus of commodities and we had people who were hungry and there was a neat thought, where if you combine the commodities the farm commodities so flower dairy products things like that that the government was paying to help farmers produce and get them into the bellies of people who were hungry and coordinate that with some nutrition education. The thought was that we would provide these foods until kids were five and it five years old. Kids would go to kindergarten and through the school lunch program. They would then also be provided with the healthy food combinations through the school program. So that's why the five-year-old cut off was implemented. When does the client begin with WIC as soon as a mom finds out she's pregnant they can enroll with us. We want to help them throughout their pregnancy. So we see moms every three months throughout the pregnancy and help them deal with whatever the pregnancy presents for them whether they are they have morning sickness real bad there again and not to wait or not enough helping them figure out how to eat is best they can, even their life circumstances. Another thing that we do is help moms with stop smoking referrals to other programs within our community that help them eliminate barriers to being healthy through different resources that are available in the community to talk a little bit about the fact that WIC offers help to families to go out and purchase things what about families who choose to breast-feed. You have programs or do you help new moms to families without yes yes, that is one of our primary emphasis is to help moms be successful with that. So when we see moms when they're pregnant were helping them answer questions they have about how to feed your baby no matter what way they choose to feed their baby, their options galore today. We want moms to be successful with their breast-feeding efforts and so all of the counselors have extra training in breast-feeding support. We continually go for extra trainings to help us be better at that because we want moms to be successfully. For more information visit www.health1network.org or find us on social media health first network