Policy & Practice | Spring 2025

be impeding enrollment: trouble accessing online applications or county offices, fear of social stigma, confusion around eligibility. But assigning the burden of overcoming those barriers to potential applicants—often people already struggling with poverty and constraints on time and informa tion access—meant preserving the status quo. So leaders envisioned a proactive outreach campaign that not only addressed the specific obstacles Kentuckians faced, but provided assis tance to help overcome them. The first question: To whom should CHFS be reaching out? After all, if a member of these eligible but unen rolled households had never applied for other benefits or walked through the doors of a community partner organization such as a food pantry, the agency might not have been aware. The CHFS needed a way to uncover the total population eligible for SNAP benefits and reach them with targeted, relevant communications that reso nated with their circumstances. Agency leaders tapped a nationwide data set of social drivers of health and deployed a team of data scientists and public health specialists that used geospatial analytics to get an accurate picture of Kentucky’s population. The team identified residents likely eligible for SNAP benefits, based on income and household size, and compared that data to current enrollee records. It turned out that 600,000 households, half of them including children, were likely to be eligible for SNAP benefits but not receiving them—more than double CHFS’s estimate. For a pilot to test data-driven outreach methods, the agency identi fied a subset of 150,000 Kentucky adults from a mix of urban and rural counties. The team utilized artificial intelligence (AI)-based models to attempt to identify the potential barriers and how these individuals might respond to dif ferent types of outreach. The insights enabled the team to craft a digital outreach plan, delivered via text and email, with instructions for applying for benefits based on individuals’ specific challenges. The outcome: Less than a year after the pilot, more than 10,000 indi viduals had newly enrolled for SNAP

Leading organizations are showing the way, illustrating how to leverage information to improve community outcomes, using a suite of strategies: n Identifying specific subpopu lations facing barriers and recommending programs that are tailored to individual needs n Anticipating population needs by providing detailed analysis of communities n Activating the community by identifying more effective outreach methods, enabling tailored and per sonalized communication campaigns to enhance program awareness n Guiding resource allocation by painting a broad picture of commu nities, identifying resource deserts, and guiding solutions to improve outcomes at the neighborhood level n Measuring efficacy by evaluating policy and program efficacy using years of longitudinal data, helping agencies achieve programmatic goals

Sean Conlin is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Strategy & Analytics practice.

Chris Stehno is a Managing Director in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Strategy & Analytics Consulting.

Raaj Parekh is an Associate Vice President for Product Strategy in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Strategy & Analytics practice.

Improving Food Security in Kentucky

Jamia McDonald, JD, is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP’s

Officials at Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) understand the importance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to the Commonwealth’s residents, with thousands of individuals and families accessing SNAP benefits each month. Yet, a sizable number of Kentuckians eligible for benefits either let their enroll ment lapse or have never enrolled at all, leaving notable gaps in food security. CHFS was not certain exactly how many people were missing benefits, what barriers prevented them from enrolling, or how to effectively reach that population. And without that information, the agency was stymied. From years of experience, staffers had hunches about what might

Government & Public Services practice.

Tiffany Dovey Fishman is a Senior Manager with

Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights.

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