![]() ![]() “This is not a political issue,” says Dr. Now, there is a bipartisan effort to make the 2021 increase permanent. WIC’s vegetable and fruit benefit was first introduced in 2009 and is credited with significantly improving the dietary quality of WIC participants’ nutrition and reducing the prevalence of childhood obesity among WIC toddlers. This monthly benefit increase has resulted in more than triple the amount of fruit and vegetable purchases, a greater variety of produce redeemed by WIC families, and increased fruit and vegetable consumption by young children. ![]() In June 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act significantly raised the WIC monthly benefit for vegetables and fruits, positioning families to make healthier food choices and positively impacting local businesses and farmers. Encompassing over 40 sites in Southern California, Heluna Health’s WIC Program serves more than 180,000 women, infants, and children every month, translating into approximately 3% of the nation’s total and 20% of California’s total WIC participants. Collective approaches are key, and Heluna Health continues to build integrated and coordinated rapid relief responses that create positive community outcomes.įor more than 40 years, Heluna Health’s USDA-funded Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program has provided healthy, free food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and family resources to economically challenged households with children under age five who are at nutritional risk. ![]() Heluna Health provided staffing services to support the hiring, onboarding, and training of 800 combined support personnel (Disaster Service Workers, California state employees, and Heluna Health staff) and more than 500 active volunteers, while also delivering technical support, direct supervision, and guidance to the teams.Īltogether, the teams completed more than 91,000 case investigations, reached over 52,000 individuals through contact tracing activities, and supported the development and implementation of a multi-level staffing infrastructure to expand and sustain the county’s fixed, mobile, and pop-up vaccination operations.īeing on the front lines of pandemic relief in California during COVID-19, Heluna Health has proven that its organizational expertise is a vital resource for local and national efforts around pandemic preparedness. To supplement this effort, volunteers from the community were recruited to fill key roles. County workers shifted their duties to respond to the pandemic as contact tracers. The intensive efforts to scale-up Santa Clara County’s critical pandemic case investigation and contact tracing (CICT) and mobile vaccination response efforts aimed to build a dynamic COVID-19 response workforce. ![]() It was an unprecedented increase in capacity in such a short amount of time.” “Without Heluna Health, the county could not have achieved this. Rudman, Assistant Public Health Officer with Santa Clara County’s Department of Public Health. “Heluna Health’s support was invaluable in helping the county build, train, and lead its 1,000-person COVID-19 contact tracing workforce,” says Sarah L. They reached out to Heluna Health for help. It was becoming clear to county officials that they would need to mount a rapid response to the escalating crisis. Two months later, the county issued one of the nation’s first stay-at-home orders to address the rising number of local COVID cases. It was January 31, 2020, and the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health in California had just recorded its first case of COVID-19. ![]()
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