CQI Case Studies
The WIC program provides quality nutrition services for women, infants, and children through nutrition counseling, healthy foods, breastfeeding support, and referrals to healthcare. WIC is a federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
WIC is operated locally by the Guilford County Department of Public Health; it is also operated individually in other North Carolina counties under the umbrella of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
CQI Goal
Collect data to better understand the barriers its current and potential new clients face in participating in WIC services. Use that data to make service improvements that reduce those barriers, and continue to track the results of those improvements to ensure more people who need WIC services can benefit from them.
CQI Cycle
Plan
Design and implement a process and tools to gather actionable information from families about key barriers that inhibit their participation in WIC services. Look across steps in the process such as enrolling, visiting the WIC office for direct nutrition and other support, redeeming benefits, etc.
Do
Create and implement a survey for collecting data from families while they are in the waiting room at the program’s two clinic locations in Greensboro and High Point.
Study
Results from more than 400 surveys from WIC participants provided several insights into how its service can become more accessible, with the primary emphasis on reducing clients’ time spent in the office and adding a children’s area to the waiting room. Other suggested improvements included clarifying service information on the website and more detailed appointment reminders. WIC also identified a need to develop a survey targeting non-WIC participants.
Act
WIC installed children’s areas in both clinics, is working on clarifying its website information, undertook a new process to track clients’ time in the office, and is now identifying process improvements to reduce that time.
Learning
Issues we identified during this CQI cycle will help us improve our client’s experience and hopefully increase our WIC caseload.
We can easily repeat the process to see if changes implemented were successful and identify other potential barriers to participation.
