The Role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Addressing Negative Outcomes Associated with Food Insecurity

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn extensive attention to the problem of food insecurity in the United States. This attention is primarily due to the projected dramatic increases of up to 50% in the number of people experiencing food insecurity. While COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of food security, its appearance as a leading health and policy issue was long before COVID-19. A central reason for this prominence is due to the multiple negative health outcomes and subsequent higher health care costs. The chapters in this book provide a welcome set of new perspectives on these negative health and other outcomes. These negative outcomes would be far, far worse, were it not for the existence of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program). In this chapter, I provide an overview of this program and why it succeeds in its central goal of alleviating food insecurity. And, hence, how SNAP also reduces the negative health outcomes covered in the other chapters of this book. Before doing so, though, I provide some information about the determinants of food insecurity in the U.S. and how SNAP is especially well-suited to addressing these determinants.