Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Healthy Kids Iowa program that funded summer meal boxes for kids received mixed reviews in preliminary results of an evaluation of the program.

Erin Drinnin, director of the Division of Community Access and Eligibility with Iowa Health and Human Services, said during a recent Iowa Food System Coalition’s Iowa Local Food Policy Summit that the agency is still awaiting final evaluation results from the evaluator. (The Iowa Food System Coalition is now led by Interim Director Tommy Hexter.) 

“It was a really big lift for our community, and got a lot of food out to a lot of kids that didn’t have access over the summer,” Drinnin said. “We provided … the equivalent of $40 per kiddo over the summer per month. And that was a massive undertaking. We really, really appreciated the partnerships that we had in place with Healthy Kids Iowa.”

Drinnin said the agency surveyed participants as well as sites that distributed boxes of food. She said there were two insights from the preliminary results.

“One is: participants really liked the program.” Drinnin said. “There was high appreciation for the program. People got a lot of food; they liked that. They got diverse food options. They got access to a lot of healthy and nutritious foods that their kids may not have otherwise eaten.”

The second insight was that it was “a lot of food for these sites to move in a really short amount of time,” she said. “So there were a lot of operational and logistical challenges that the food banks and distribution sites had in terms of being able to store the food, having cold storage for the food, being able to transport it, all of those things, as well as really not having enough time to plan and communicate the program.” 

Drinnin said the state agency doesn’t have specifics yet on what next summer looks like, “but it’s been really helpful to hear that feedback and be able to incorporate that into plans for the next year.”

Among the critiques of the Healthy Kids Iowa program were that items in the boxes of food were not always kid-friendly, said Paige Chickering, Iowa State Manager of the Save the Children Action Network, which focuses on food insecurity, childhood education and child care issues. 

“So one item that I remember kind of became notorious … was there was a chickpea spread, and this was offered in combination with bread and jelly. And the implication was that they would make these into, like, quote, unquote, peanut butter jelly sandwiches, but with the chickpea spread … kiddos [were] not very excited about that,” Chickering said. “So a lot of folks were saying, ‘Actually, I’m OK. I don’t want the chickpea spread. I’ll just leave that here.’”

Aside from that, there were some “really great items” in the food boxes like eggs, dairy, protein – items that are more challenging to find at the food pantries, she said. 

Reynolds’ Healthy Kids Iowa program funds summer meals for kids, but does not go as far as Summer EBT, a federal program, food security advocates have said.

“Summer EBT would have assisted 245,000 kids across the state and that’s $40 per month for qualifying kids in the form of an EBT card,” said Luke Elzinga, policy and advocacy manager at the Des Moines Area Religious Council, in a July interview. “You could use it at any SNAP-authorized retailer to purchase any SNAP food.”

The Healthy Kids Iowa program is a pilot program run by Iowa Health and Human Services that aims to assist about 65,000 kids, Elzinga said.

In 2023 and 2024, Reynolds declined to participate in the federal Summer EBT program, asking instead for waivers to use the federal funds for boxes of food available for pick up, but the requests were denied by the Biden administration, the Des Moines Register reported. Reynolds said Iowa received over $12 million in USDA meal reimbursements for summer nutrition programs in 2023-24 and she allocated another $900,000 to launch a competitive grant program to expand the number of meal sites around Iowa.

Reynolds announced in May the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service had approved a demonstration project submitted by Iowa Health and Human Services for the state’s summer food pilot program. Healthy Kids Iowa is an alternative to the Summer EBT program that aims to serve Iowa children healthier foods at a lower cost by leveraging Iowa’s existing network of summer feeding programs and community providers, according to a news release.

During a legislators panel at the Iowa Local Food Policy Summit, Annette Sweeney, R-Iowa Falls, said she’s had conversations with people in Brooklyn, Iowa, about what was distributed and how the program could “even become better.”

“If you had a federal program just … blanket the whole thing, you wouldn’t get that personal touch to this,” she said.

Beth Wessel Kroeschell, D-Ames, said the summer EBT program “would allow families to go in and make the decisions that they need to make for their family. Just go to the grocery store and spend those $40 per child per month just as they see fit for their family. … So I strongly support the SNAP program, the summer EBT program. I hope we someday are participating in it also.”