Effect of a WIC program on children's clinic activity in a local health department

Abstract

Two years' encounter data from a local health department in rural North Carolina are analyzed to determine the extent to which WIC increased the demand for health department services. WIC clinic visits were found to contribute disproportionately to Children's Clinic activity. Nearly 80 per cent of the increase in total clinic encounters from FY78 to FY79 was attributable to WIC alone. Whereas in the first quarter of FY78 only 18 per cent of Children's Clinic encounters by infants were to WIC clinics, that number had risen to more than 58 per cent by the last quarter of FY79. The number of children on WIC as a percentage of all non-WIC encounters with public health nurses increased during the same period from 19 to 34 per cent. Finally, infants who came for the first time to the Children's Clinic to be certified for WIC contributed an increasing percentage of all infants seen in non-WIC clinics, from 0 per cent at the start of the study to almost 15 per cent by the final quarter. It is concluded that the presence of the WIC program in this local health department was responsible for substantial increases in non-WIC clinical activity that were not supported financially by WIC or any other source.