Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Maternal and infant health, nutrition, and well-being from pregnancy to early childhood underlie longer-term health outcomes. Poverty and food insecurity rates are rising across Canada, which has consequences for health and nutrition. The Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP) is a federally funded program implemented in communities to support pregnant people, new parents, and their babies facing disadvantages due to social and economic challenges. Each CPNP site's programming is locally-adapted to best support the needs of those the respective community. Despite the CPNP's long existence, there has been limited recording of how different CPNP sites implement programming. My research included a national survey of CPNP sites (n=91) to understand what breastfeeding and food supports are offered, and how the pandemic affected programming. Key findings included that breastfeeding and food supports are integral to programming, but implemented in many different ways; CPNP sites rely heavily on in-kind services and external funding; rising costs have increased participant needs and limit the food supports CPNP sites can provide; and that CPNP sites adapted and continued to offer programming despite the many challenges faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., shift to virtual programming, loss of public health support). Although CPNP sites are resilient overall, they face issues related to funding limitations which should be critically reviewed to align with the program mandate. My research will be presented as part of a conference symposium, which I led the development of. Beyond the survey, participants will have an opportunity to learn about the CPNP and food insecurity in Canada from other research and community perspectives, including research on how Canadian families with infants cope with food insecurity and how different life circumstances shape the delivery of CPNP programing within an urban community-based agency.