While most Americans fall below the Dietary Guidelines for recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, low-income people, including SNAP participants, are less likely to consume sufficient quantities of fruits and vegetables. The HIP is a creative response to the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, which called for a demonstration program to test ways to increase SNAP participants' consumption of fruits and vegetables, including use of financial incentives at the point-of-sale. It will enroll households that participate in SNAP and for every dollar participants spend on fruits and vegetables using their SNAP benefits cards 30 cents will be added to the balance on their cards -- thus cutting the cost of fruits and vegetables by almost one third.

Abt Associates is leading a team that includes Westat; the Atkins Center for Weight and Health at the University of California at Berkeley; and Imadgen, LLC. Collectively, this team has decades of experience executing nutrition program studies, implementing and analyzing experimental evaluations, conducting state-of-the-art nutrient data collection, and working with SNAP systems that manage administrative data and electronic benefits transfer.

SOURCE Abt Associates