Nutrition Policy Institute Director and Cooperative Extension Specialist Lorrene Ritchie received a $100,000 grant from The David & Lucile Packard Foundation to study the challenges faced by California families with young children that participate in the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is in collaboration with Shannon Whaley, director of research and evaluation at Public Health Foundation Enterprise-WIC. The project will identify barriers that WIC participants in California are experiencing in using WIC food benefits. It will also identify WIC families short-term unmet basic needs, such as food and housing insecurity, as well as access to unemployment benefits, health care, and childcare, while required to remain at home. The project will also identify how California WIC agencies are implementing federal waivers and other modifications to WIC services due to COVID-19 that can be later used to inform WIC. The 12-month project will begin on May 1, 2020 with NPI researcher Nicole Vital as the project manager.