Every child needs good prenatal care and a nutritious diet during their development years in order to ensure proper physical and mental growth. Pregnant women and children who do not receive good prenatal care statistically have a greater chance of shorter gestation periods, lower birthweights, long-term medical complications, higher medical bills, and infant mortality. WIC aims to give low-income families that cannot afford adequate prenatal care and nutritious foods the necessary means to bring their children into the world with a healthy start, and to continue raising their child in a healthy way. Nutritional risk can mean one of two things. It could be a medically based risk such as anemia, being underweight, the maternal age, a history of pregnancy complications, or poor pregnancy outcomes.
Nutritional risk can also mean a diet-based risk, such as an inadequate dietary pattern.
A health professional such as a physician, nutritionist, or nurse can determine nutritional risk based on Federal guidelines. This health screening is free to program applicants. The USDA estimates that WIC serves about 45 percent of all babies born in the U.S. and has achieved full coverage of all eligible infants and 81 percent of all eligible women and children. Since WIC cannot accommodate all that are eligible, the USDA has had to create a priority system for cases. Infants up to 6 months of age whose mothers participated in WIC or could have participated and had serious medical problems.