WIC Clinic
It was Monday, November 9th of 2020. It was my first-time exposure to the WIC clinic at Living Water Community Church in Sheldon, where they conduct WIC clinics every month. The arrival time was 07.45 am. The WIC nurses were getting ready to arrange tables and items to be used for various visits. I had an opportunity to help weigh, measure height and length for the participating children who had attended the clinic for various reasons.
Purpose/Focus of Care
WIC Clinics provide health services to communities. They provide nutrition education, screenings, and referrals to public health clinics, education, and support to breastfeeding mothers and provide them with cards to buy nutritious food. Finally, they assess women, infants, and children eligible to participate in the program depending on their income by using nutrition risk criteria. An article that I read stated, “The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is the major program in the United States that aims to improve the health and nutritional well-being of low-income pregnant and postpartum women and children under age five, and thus has potential to improve the life chances of the children who benefit from it.”(cite).
Defined community
As the name suggests, WIC’s a special program for women, infants, and children. It provides special nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding mothers, infants, and children to five. While I was there, I observed several pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and breastfeeding women.
WIC serves many communities in the USA; the Sheldon clinic serves people mostly from Hartley, Sheldon, Melvin of Obrien County. The aggregate group would be infants, toddlers, pregnant women. The family would be each family and children attending the WIC clinic, and the individual would be each child and woman.
Core Functions
WIC clinic benefits the County of Obrien by playing a special role in improving women’s health, infants, toddlers, and young children. They provide nutritious foods, nutrition education, breastfeeding support referrals to health care providers, and social services to low-income families. Individual children and women benefit by receiving supplemental foods, nutrition education, and access to healthcare and social services.
During the WIC clinic visits, nurses available at the site do an assessment, which helps with prevention. They provide education on different topics that include healthy eating, screening for anemia—infant feeding, and the importance of breastfeeding. Health promotion plays a crucial role in them. For example, they provide parents with education on the importance of immunization and identify providers in the community who offer immunization. They make appointments for immunizations and enter the record into a registry. They provide food items that are WIC approved and meet nutritional requirements such as eggs, fruits, and vegetables, organic milk, and breakfast cereal, among others.
The WIC program policy is majorly funded by federal grants, which are food grants and food service administration grants. The state and local programs are funded by the federal government and sometimes supplemental funding from other outside resources. The state assures its people that WIC participation increases healthier births, gives more nutritionally approved diets for infants, pregnant women, and children, and provides better care for children from low-income families. The major problem I observed with the WIC agency is that one clinic serves almost the whole County, which is a potential problem for providing enough services to every client.
Healthy People 2020
The main objective for the WIC clinic to its clients is to provide nutritious food to pregnant women to enable them to deliver healthy babies, and the babies are healthy as they grow up. Children may face health problems if they don’t receive enough nourishment during their developmental stages. Another objective for WIC is to provide services that improve public health living standards. They also help to determine underlying conditions that determine people’s health.
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary
Weighing, measuring heights and length were secondary prevention interventions. Nutritional education programs and teachings on the importance of breastfeeding are considered primary prevention. WIC clinics work to provide local services for women and children, and they are considered tertiary.
Evaluation
WIC clinics are essential programs to some families in the community. Low-income family’s children deserve to eat healthily and feed their families nutritious food. I also learned that organizations that help fund WIC clinics are so passionate and generous for all they do. Ethically WIC wants to treat every pregnant mother, children, and infants from low-income families equal regardless of their income source. They are different people in the world; some are kind-hearted, caring, loving, and compassionate. God knows each one of us by our names and our hearts. Providing individualized care is showing shalom. Jesus washed his disciples’ feet as a sign of love and is another good example of shalom. WIC clinic is from an emic perspective because each woman and children will come for different needs it provides. This learning experience was very educational.