Policy & Practice | Winter 2023

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By Molly Tierney and Julie Somberg

Closing the Gap in Integrated Eligibility: How Kansas’ Authentic Engagement with Communities Propelled System-Level Change

M uch of the work of administering human services relies on long term strategic agendas. Sometimes, along the journey, remarkable things happen in unplanned ways. This is largely a result of organizations that appoint curious, impassioned admin istrators and arm them with data. Leaders in Kansas and their efforts to maximize the use of food subsidies for families in their communities is a great example. Human services’ success starts with a leadership team that cares a lot about children who are at risk of going hungry. Jenalea Randall and Stacy Thowe are with the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF), where, among other things, they are responsible for the distribu tion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—a food subsidy program for households with low incomes. Amanda Owsley is from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), where, among other things, she is responsible for the distribution of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). WIC is a food subsidy program for women in child-bearing years and their children up to age 5. It’s a pre scription of sorts that includes healthy foods designed for these develop mental stages in life. In 2021, each was working tirelessly to maximize the utilization rate of these programs but knew there was more they could do. An unusual opportunity

The agencies found their way to Share Our Strength, a nonprofit working to solve problems of hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. There, they joined the “No Kid Hungry” campaign and were awarded funding needed to increase understanding and use of these critical family support programs. They anchored their work in data, focusing on the demographic profile of households enrolled in one, but not both, programs and built a data driven awareness campaign designed to pull them in. First, a data lake was developed to identify the individuals: those who qualified for SNAP and WIC but participated in only one program across seven priority counties. From

presented itself to compare person-spe cific data across both agencies. Upon analysis, a simple indicator leapt off the page with statistical clarity: a signifi cant number of citizens were eligible for both WIC and SNAP but were only receiving one benefit. They concluded two things quickly. First, closing the gap would have a significant impact on the households being served. Second, if these citizens were adequately informed about the programs, they would take advantage of them. They knew that the nature of how these programs were organized— divided into separate agencies with different applications and different points of distribution—often made it difficult for citizens to utilize both.

Photos courtesy of Accenture

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Policy & Practice Winter 2023