eWIC Launches in Anchorage Grocery Stores

ANCHORAGE—The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) public health nutrition program is now offering Anchorage families a new way to shop for WIC benefits using an electronic benefit transaction (EBT) card.

The Anchorage Health Department (AHD) has fully transitioned from issuing paper checks to electronic food benefits through eWIC cards, modernizing the shopping experience for WIC’s participants and grocery stores.

With this new card, shopping is easier and WIC families are able to better track their monthly food balance. Participants also have access to a new WICShopper Smart Phone App allowing them to check their food benefit balance and scan a food’s bar code to determine if it is a WIC allowed food.

AHD is the sole vendor for operating the WIC program in the Municipality of Anchorage, providing nutrition services to over 5,000 lower-income pregnant women, infants, and children under age five. These WIC families shop at more than twenty-one Anchorage grocery stores and farmer’s markets and spend $3,128,136 a year through the program on healthy foods, benefiting the local economy.

Christy Lawton, AHD Public Health Division Manager says, “WIC Anchorage is excited to offer a new, convenient way for our families to shop for healthy foods.”