Today’s population health challenges are complex. Addressing these challenges and building environments that value and promote health for everyone requires expertise from multiple scientific disciplines and public and private partners.
Guided by the principles of scientific rigor, equity, justice, community engagement, and multidisciplinary and multi-institution collaboration, the Lerner Center’s mission is to improve population and community health through research, education, outreach and health promotion programming focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health and health disparities.
With faculty affiliates from public health, sociology, psychology, economics, medicine and public administration, the Lerner Center’s approach to research is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.
Established in 2011 with an endowment from Sid and Helaine Lerner, the center fulfills its mission through the interrelated pillars of research, education, advocacy and action.
Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health
Population Health Research Brief Series
Behavioral Science Interventions Could Increase SNAP Comprehension and Awareness Among Military Families
Colleen Heflin, Hannah Patnaik, Leonard Lopoo, and Siobhan O’Keefe
November 2023
Abstract
Food insecurity is more common among military families than the general population, and the transition from active service to civilian life is a time of heightened risk. The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to support food security among low-income families. Many eligible military and veteran families do not enroll in SNAP due to a lack of information, stigma, and administrative barriers. This brief highlights findings from a survey experiment conducted in 2022 and 2023 to assess how small changes to SNAP informational flyers, such as simplifying information provided about SNAP, highlighting that other veterans use SNAP, and emphasizing how much monetary support veterans may be foregoing, to improve SNAP uptake among military families transitioning to civilian life. Results of the study show that making these small changes to informational flyers increased veterans’ awareness and comprehension of SNAP, while also reducing the cognitive load placed on veterans and their families.Population Health Brief Series
Research Projects
Research by Lerner affiliates is regularly funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and many other federal agencies and foundations. The Lerner Center also funds population health research at Syracuse University through its Faculty Fellows Program.
Student Opportunities
Are you an undergraduate or graduate student at Syracuse University interested in population and community health? Do you seek a career with meaning and purpose?
The Lerner Center provides distinctive experience that combines traditional and applied training in population health and community health research and engagement to address pressing local, regional and national health problems and reduce health inequities—from academic certificates, to internships, to service learning opportunities and more.
Healthy Monday
Learn tips and tricks to jump start your Monday, maintain or promote healthy behaviors and help to end preventable chronic diseases.
Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health
Population Health Research Brief Series
Behavioral Science Interventions Could Increase SNAP Comprehension and Awareness Among Military Families
Colleen Heflin, Hannah Patnaik, Leonard Lopoo, and Siobhan O’Keefe
November 2023