Many of you have heard how I’d like to see the food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) hard-wire better nutrition into the program by beginning to include nutritious food inventory criteria for SNAP vendors. To help make the case, we contracted with the ASU School of Nutrition & Health Promotion to write a White Paper outlining strategies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of SNAP that are: improving access to healthy foods to provide better choices; incentivizing purchase of healthy foods; restricting access to unhealthy foods; and maximizing education to more effectively reach a larger population of SNAP participants. 

We got good news this week.  The Paper, called Policy Considerations for Improving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Making a case for Decreasing the Burden of Obesity was selected for Oral presentation during the 140th American Public Health Association Annual Meeting this October.  ASU’s abstract was selected from a large number of excellent submittals and was judged to be of high quality and interest.  We’re getting some traction!