A battle is looming in Washington about stopgap funding to avoid a government shutdown. Lawmakers recently voted 44-48 against a short-term funding bill that would keep the government operating after Tuesday — the end of the federal fiscal year and the end of the funding nationally for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program nutrition education program known as SNAP-Ed.
SNAP-Ed is an obesity prevention and healthy lifestyle program for individuals and families from low-income households. The program partners with thousands of community-based organizations across Illinois to work directly with low-resourced families to help them on their journey to be healthy and stretch their food resources. This is done by people who often live in the same neighborhoods they are working in.
The end of SNAP-Ed arrives at a time when federal budget cuts spelled out in the One Big Beautiful Bill already slashed food assistance across the nation. New reports from Gov. JB Pritzker’s office, the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have calculated approximately 229,000 people in Illinois will lose their SNAP benefits altogether, and 400,000 will see a reduction in their benefits, because of the bill, which passed earlier this year.
As the director of the SNAP-Ed program at the University of Illinois Chicago, I see firsthand how this program changes lives and interrupts the pathways to preventable nutrition-related diseases.
Research shows that each year, SNAP-Ed in Illinois prevents more than 5,000 cases of obesity and approximately 570 cases of food insecurity. Additionally, most participants (60%) have reported making positive healthy changes after participating in our program.
SNAP-Ed develops stand-alone resources that can be used by individuals and practitioners, such as Find Food Illinois, which is a publicly available dynamic map. The statewide map contains grocery stores, food pantries and restaurants that offer free food and meals and accept SNAP benefits (food stamps) or the Women, Infants and Children program, known as WIC.
Addressing core structural problems with novel solutions is another reason for our effectiveness. Our SNAP-Ed work in Chicago helped create a meal kit delivery program, the first of its kind nationwide, with Top Box Foods. This program circumvents the traditional issues of “food access” by delivering healthy meals directly to families using their benefits.
SNAP-Ed funding ends Tuesday. This stripping of funding functionally sunsets a 30-year-old program with a track record of improving the lives of all people, especially members of our most vulnerable population, using benefits. While the funding was cut in the U.S. Senate, the opportunity to refund SNAP-Ed is still available.
The best health care is preventative nutrition work. If Democrats’ strategy in the Senate to increase health care funding fails to restore SNAP-Ed funding nationally, the state of Illinois must support the work to proactively keep people healthy — especially as food assistance resources are being cut.
SNAP-Ed’s mission is to help people lead healthier lives by teaching and encouraging them to eat better and be more physically active. But as a family’s food resources are cut, people tend to maintain dignity by keeping their family members full as opposed to prioritizing eating in a healthy manner, even though they desire to do both. For society at large, this doesn’t work out in anyone’s favor.
This is not only a moral issue. It’s also a financial one. The cost of inaction now will have Illinoisans footing an even larger bill later. The direct cost of obesity in the U.S. has been estimated at 17% of the total health care expenditure — about $126 billion per year. This cost would be borne on the backs of our most vulnerable residents. SNAP-Ed in Illinois is truly a bargain: For every dollar invested, there is a return of $5 to $9.
Democrats should add a funding measure to any proposed stopgap funding bill (and repeal the One Big Beautiful Bill) to restore funding nationwide to SNAP-Ed. Barring that, the Illinois policymakers should prepare to cover the expense of the program — or be prepared to pay a big, ugly expensive bill later.
Daylan Dufelmeier, Ph.D., is the director of the SNAP-Ed program at University of Illinois Chicago, associate director of the Office of Community Engagement and Neighborhood Health Partnerships at UI Health and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
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