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
Waiving SNAP Interviews during the COVID19 Pandemic Increased SNAP Caseloads
Colleen Heflin, William Clay Fannin, Leonard Lopoo, and Siobhan O’Keefe
March 2024
Abstract
Food insecurity in the United States reached historically high rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus substantially increasing demand for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To facilitate access to SNAP during the pandemic, the federal government granted state SNAP offices the option to waive the interview requirement – an administrative burden associated with the SNAP certification process. This brief summarizes findings from a recent study that used data from SNAP offices across 10 states to examine the impact of SNAP interview waivers on SNAP caseloads from January 5th to April 30th of 2021. Findings reveal that counties that implemented the SNAP interview waiver experienced an estimated 5% increase in SNAP caseloads compared to counties that did not.
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
Waiving SNAP Interviews during the COVID19 Pandemic Increased SNAP Caseloads
Colleen Heflin, William Clay Fannin, Leonard Lopoo, and Siobhan O’Keefe
March 2024
Abstract
Food insecurity in the United States reached historically high rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus substantially increasing demand for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To facilitate access to SNAP during the pandemic, the federal government granted state SNAP offices the option to waive the interview requirement – an administrative burden associated with the SNAP certification process. This brief summarizes findings from a recent study that used data from SNAP offices across 10 states to examine the impact of SNAP interview waivers on SNAP caseloads from January 5th to April 30th of 2021. Findings reveal that counties that implemented the SNAP interview waiver experienced an estimated 5% increase in SNAP caseloads compared to counties that did not.