SNAP-Ed is vital to the health of Georgia families and communities

Roughly one in eight Georgians rely on SNAP food assistance benefits to put food on the table. More than half of the roughly 1.3 million Georgia households who rely on SNAP to put food on the table have children.

When a family is looking at providing healthy meals for their family on approximately $6 per day, it can be easy to turn to highly processed, cheap food. Not because parents choose to feed their families unhealthy options, but because in many communities, that’s what works on such a slim budget. 

Enter SNAP-Ed.

SNAP-Ed is a long-standing federal program that works in parallel with food assistance benefits to walk alongside SNAP recipients by providing education, opportunities and programming to engage in healthy behaviors. And here in Georgia, SNAP-Ed programming has been highly effective.

Open Hand and HealthMPowers are two legacy organizations that have been leveraging SNAP-Ed funding for decades and with great impact. We have worked across Georgia to effectively improve healthy behaviors of the SNAP population in Georgia. Through SNAP-Ed, Open Hand has delivered life-changing nutrition education to more than 1,400 Georgians in 2024 alone — empowering individuals and families with the tools to eat healthier and thrive.

This evidence-based intervention combines a six-week Cooking Matters for Adults course with weekly produce baskets and continued support through monthly reunions and ongoing produce distribution. The results speak for themselves: participants reported significant improvements in fruit and vegetable intake, food security, confidence in grocery shopping and budgeting and use of nutrition labels and grocery lists.  

HealthMPowers has focused its work on educating young people to inspire healthy habits through youth leadership and policy, system and environmental changes. Over 60,000 children and youth are positively impacted annually through a program that has been proven to change the mindsets and behavior of young people to eat healthier and be more physically active.

For 19 years, SNAP-Ed funding has been leveraged in early care programs, K-12 schools and afterschool programs in nearly every geography across the state with proven results that positively impact millions of Georgia children and youth, educators, families and entire communities. We lift up local change agents — including young people — to care about their health and empower them to lead healthy initiatives among their peers. Our latest data shows increases in fruit and vegetable consumption, water consumption and more physical activity compared to the national average.

According to the CDC, 90 percent of health care costs in the U.S. are attributed to chronic conditions, many of which are largely preventable through improved diet and regular physical activity. And those costs per individual only increase over time.

SNAP-Ed plays a vital role for hundreds of thousands of Georgians annually. It improves the health of those most vulnerable to chronic disease, is implemented with quality and fidelity to ensure stewardship of taxpayer dollars and is a needed boost to ensure low-income Georgians can do right by their children and families. Because when we know better, we do better — plain and simple.

The current U.S. House budget proposal seeks to eliminate this program entirely, setting off ripple effects around the country, including here in our home state. If we’re serious about improving the health of Georgians, evidence-based, proven programs that prevent chronic conditions must be funded. We can and must continue to reduce health care costs and improve the health of Georgians. Programs like SNAP-Ed should be magnified, not defunded. Maintaining SNAP-Ed funding is not just a cost-effective investment — it’s a proven strategy for building healthier, more resilient communities.