Gov. Kim 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 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. “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 reports. 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.

“The goal of Healthy Kids Iowa is to help fill that summer gap that we know so many families experience during the summer when kids don’t have access to school lunch,” said Erin Drinnin, director of the Division of Community Access and Eligibility with Iowa Health and Human Services.

Drinnin said the program emphasizes nutrition while trying to “reach as many kids and families as possible” and fill gaps for those who may not be eligible for SNAP or have access to SNAP.

Through Healthy Kids Iowa, eligible families can select $40 worth of food for each eligible child per month and pick up the food at one of the program’s distribution sites across the state, according to an Iowa HHS news release. Among the requirements to participate in the program, households must meet the federal poverty level of 185% or below and have children ages 4-18 in their care.

Iowa’s six Feeding America food banks have been contracted to source and distribute food for the pilot program. Pick-up sites were selected in partnership with the Feeding America food banks and include food pantries, schools, churches and other community spaces.

Elzinga said at DMARC they have not seen that families have been able to get food based on their cultural or dietary needs, which the state said would be an option when the program was announced.

“We have not seen that. What we have seen is everyone getting the same food,” he said. “The only choice involved is the ability to refuse certain items. We haven’t really seen a lot of culturally appropriate food.”

Drinnin said the food is based on guidelines that break down the different categories of food for a healthy diet.

“That was the basis that we used for giving the food banks guidance on what they order and include in those packages,” she said.

Elzinga said “doing something is better than nothing.”

“We’re glad that the state is doing something here to help address childhood food insecurity during the summer, but we really strongly believe that Summer EBT is just a vastly more effective and efficient way to get food to families,” he said.

With Summer EBT, people can purchase “exactly the food that their family needs,” Elzinga said, and they can shop at the grocery store instead of going to a separate pick-up site.

Annette Hacker, chief communications and strategy officer at the Food Bank of Iowa, said the food bank has been involved with administering the program as a Feeding America food bank.

“It’s been well documented that there’s less funding for it than there would have been for Summer EBT, so obviously it will serve fewer, but the good news is this is funding … and it’s food on the table for kids [that] we didn’t have, so it’s better than what we had.”

She said within the first month, the Food Bank of Iowa has sourced a lot of fresh produce, things like clementines and pears and avocados, grapes, milk, ground beef, tortillas, shredded cheese, pasta, pasta sauce and Uncrustables sandwiches, with a peanut butter alternative.

[It’s] lots of fresh produce and kid-friendly foods that are nutritious that we know kids will eat and that are easy to prepare for kids or caregivers,” Hacker said.

Drinnin said the state was awarded $9.1 million in federal money for the summer, most of which is spent on food, with some money for evaluating the program and administrative costs that go to the food banks for operating the program.

Among the insights state officials are hoping to learn from the pilot include feedback from the families on whether it was convenient.

“Did they meet their family’s need – did it meet their food security but also did it influence their health and their healthy eating habits, since again we’re trying to focus on giving them diverse, nutritious food options,” Drinnin said.

Also, state leaders are interested to learn what sort of infrastructure is needed to support a project like this.

“We‘re getting a lot of food to a lot of kids this summer [in a] pretty short amount of time,” she said. “What worked, what didn’t work? How could we do this differently in the future if we were to implement this model again?”