Leveraging Head Start and WIC to Address Food Insecurity in Immigrant Mixed-Status Families: A Perspective Paper

Immigrant households face a disproportionate burden of food insecurity. Cultural, linguistic, and political factors inhibit mixed-status immigrant families from accessing community nutrition and food safety-net nutrition resources. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Head Start services provide a unique set of services that may be supportive toward alleviating food insecurity for young children and their families, particularly immigrant mixed-status families. To fulfill their respective missions, it is ideal that services align and operate in a complementary way. The perspective of this paper is that Head Start settings can help maximize WIC benefit uptake among historically marginalized families, including mixed-status families who are less likely to receive WIC services because of misinformation, discrimination, and increased fears of being targets of immigration enforcement policies.