Panel approves $500K in federal funds for Arkansas WIC telehealth program
A panel of Arkansas lawmakers approved $500,000 in federal funding Tuesday to support telehealth services for “high-risk” recipients of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
At least 50% of the 65,000 Arkansans in the low-income nutrition aid program are considered high-risk, Cristy Sellers, the Arkansas Department of Health’s WIC Nutrition Education Coordinator and Center Director for Health Advancement, told the Arkansas Legislative Council’s Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review committee.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines high nutritional risk as “medically-based risks … such as anemia, underweight, maternal age, history of pregnancy complications, or poor pregnancy outcomes.”
USDA requires high-risk WIC enrollees to meet with a registered dietitian within 45 days of enrollment. The Arkansas WIC program has seen “a severe decline in RD staff” in the past three years and currently has 13 serving the entire state’s WIC population, according to the Health Department’s request to the Legislature.
The department needs 40 registered dietitians to be fully staffed, ADH Chief of Staff Don Adams said.
“We have a small number of nutritionists trying to cover the whole state, and they’re having to travel to three, four, five different counties to cover those counties,” Adams said. “This will help efficiency-wise in utilizing their time to dedicate [it] to nutrition education.”
The Health Department plans to build an online platform that allows enrollees to schedule future appointments, send and receive documents and connect with WIC vendor liaisons who can assist them in real time while shopping for groceries, the funding request states. The funding will also allow ADH to train 96 staff for the program.
The full Arkansas Legislative Council must approve the $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act money Friday in order for ADH to put it to use.
Telehealth has been named as a tool that would improve Arkansas maternal and child health care, including in a strategic committee report released earlier this month at Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ request.
Arkansas has one of the nation’s highest maternal mortality rates and the third highest infant mortality rate, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will receive up to $2.4 million in federal funds over the next four years to “test prevention strategies” for reducing maternal and infant mortality in the Delta, UAMS announced Tuesday in a news release.
The UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and its High-Risk Pregnancy Program will be key participants in the initiative, contributing “access to its three grant-funded satellite digital health resource centers at Lake Village, Helena-West Helena and Pine Bluff,” the release states.