BACKGROUND: Participation in the US Department of Agriculture's summer meals program is consistently lower compared to National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participation, even though the programs target the same population of children. The purpose of this study was to elucidate reasons for participation and nonparticipation in the summer meals…

Before the pandemic, millions of college students eligible for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) did not access the benefit. This gap between eligibility for SNAP benefits and the use of those benefits is often a result of confusion around federal eligibility requirements. Even when eligibility guidelines were temporarily…

Food insecurity is widespread among college students in the United States. CalFresh food benefits, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, can help students in California pay for food, but may not reach all eligible students. CalFresh enrollment rates among students have been difficult to estimate due to…

CalFresh benefits can help college students make ends meet while attending college, but not all eligible students apply. One contributing factor may be that students are not aware they are eligible. Therefore, outreach efforts informing them of their eligibility could help increase take-up rates. To test this, we designed and conducted two…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Education have taken some steps to connect college students with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help them pay for food, but gaps in planning and execution remain. Effective July 2024, a new law gave Education authority to share students' Free Application…

During the 2019-20 school year, public schools identified 1.3 million students who were experiencing homelessness--2.5 percent of all those enrolled. With the added $800 million that Congress provided in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan's Homeless Children and Youth program (ARP-HCY), many states have started or expanded initiatives to…

Homelessness is a traumatic experience with long-term consequences, particularly for infants and toddlers in their most critical stages of development. Yet homelessness among young children is hidden. Lack of shelter, fear of having children removed from parental custody, and restrictive eligibility criteria for housing programs mean that most…

Students with intellectual disability (ID) are increasingly attending postsecondary education institutions and acquiring work experiences while completing their studies. One of the main motivations for students with ID to seek higher education is to broaden and increase their chance for finding fulfilling, paid employment in their communities.…

Starting in September 2017, the first borrowers became eligible and began applying to have their loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to review the PSLF program. This report examines the (1) number of borrowers pursuing PSLF and the extent to which the…

While college costs have risen significantly in the past few decades, some of those cost increases can be partially mitigated by financial aid for low-income families. But many low- and moderate-income families vastly overestimate the cost of college, leading them to assume that enrolling their children in college, particularly a four-year school,…

This paper outlines an inclusion initiative's conceptual framework for programs serving secondary students from economically challenged communities. It proposes distance learning technologies to afford these students access to learning resources, experiences, and environments in STEM. This paper addresses concerns with a complex duality of…