DI: Week 8 – The Wonderful World of WIC

This week I started a new rotation at WIC, and attended the first day of FNCE!

My week looked like this:

Monday:

This was my first “flex day”.  Each of us has a handful of flex days, throughout the semester, to work on projects or make up a day at a rotation (if we were sick, etc.).  I didn’t have any days to make up, so I used this flex day to extend my weekend in Wisconsin.  Spencer and I worked on our Halloween costumes together, and went out for brunch.  It was nice to have another day off, but it made coming back to my internship more difficult after a long, relaxing weekend!

Tuesday:

I started a new rotation at a northern Illinois county WIC site.  I shadowed one of the WIC nutritionists for my first day and learned about this specific WIC site.  They also taught me about how WIC functions in Illinois in general.  I spent two summers during my undergrad volunteering at a couple of WIC sites in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, so it was very interesting to learn about the differences between those WIC sites and the one I’m currently interning at.  

A few differences I thought were interesting:

• Size: the Minnesota WIC sites I volunteered at were in major metropolitan areas in Minnesota, while the Illinois site I’m at is in a smaller, suburban area.  Here, there’s only a couple of nutritionists working each day; while the Minnesota WIC sites I was at, there would be more than half a dozen nutritionists working at a time.
• Population: the Minnesota WIC sites were in areas with large Spanish, Hmong, and Somali-speaking populations, so there was a huge focus on nutritionists being bilingual and having translators nearby and easy to access.  Here, they mostly have English and Spanish-speaking populations; while they do have some nutritionists that can speak Spanish, they rarely (if ever) use professional translators during their appointments.
• Food packages: there are some differences in food items offered to participants based on their state regulations.  For example, Minnesota offers yogurt as a dairy option while the Illinois WIC site I’m at does not. This may seem confusing since WIC is a federal program. Basically, the federal government designates which food items state WIC programs can give out. It’s then up to the states to determine which foods on this list they want to include in their packages.
• Additional services available: since the WIC site I’m currently at is in a less-populated area, they don’t have as many additional services available as the Minnesota WIC sites I’ve been at in the past.  For those who don’t know, WIC does a lot of referring to additional resources for participants.  Common services they refer to are: organizations that give free or reduced price child car seats, medical insurance assistance, free clinics (including dental), mental health services, food pantries (including those who provide diapers and formula), housing assistance, legal help, etc.  However, they only refer to places nearby because a lot of WIC participants have limited access to transportation.  Some services only serve those who live in their community as well.  For large metropolitan WIC sites, like the ones I was at in Minnesota, there’s a ton of services out there.  For the Illinois site I’m at, the options are much more limited.

Wednesday:

Day two at my WIC site!  One of the nice things about this site being small is that I figured out where everything is very quickly.  It’s never fun to wander around trying to find the bathroom or water fountain.  :P  Today, I did some research on WIC websites across the nation to find information and resources we could use to update our WIC site.  Right now, it’s pretty much just a block of small text on the page which isn’t very appealing to read and doesn’t provide a lot of nutrition information.  I primarily worked on the nutrition section for our website update, and found some resources we could link to from other WIC sites.  My favorite is the Texas WIC website’s “Recipes” section.  

Then, I had to leave pretty early today to get to my night class on time since my WIC site is way up by Wisconsin and my class is in Maywood (by Chicago).  My class was pretty chill today; we reviewed our exams from last week and talked about child nutrition (very relevant to my current rotation).  We even got out a half hour early, so, for once, I got home before 8pm on a Wednesday night!

Thursday:

I continued working on finding resources and providing suggestions to improve the WIC website.  I also spent some time trying to find updated resources for some of the handouts they use here.  The nice thing about WIC is that they are generally very open to sharing resources they’ve developed with each other, so I had a lot of options to sift through.  For example, our WIC site was using a handout about babies spitting up, but it hadn’t been updated since 2008.  I couldn’t find an updated version from the same state’s WIC website it came from, but I was able to find a similar, more updated handout from another state’s website.  I spent my afternoon learning more about eating behaviors in infants and toddlers, and how they’ve been changing over time.

Overall, there hasn’t been nearly as much for me to do at this rotation as my previous rotations.  Apparently, this site has experienced a large reduction in the number of people who sign up for WIC so they aren’t as busy as they used to be.  This means that there aren’t a ton of appointments for me to observe which is why I’ve been working on other projects.  We also had a fire drill today, which was interesting, since the building we’re in doesn’t actually have fire alarms.  It’s an old building that was grandfathered in, so some fire fighters came in and walked through the halls saying “fire” to alert everyone to leave the building.  In order to not cause mass panic over a drill, they didn’t say “fire” with too much urgency; everyone was pretty confused about what was happening for a while.  :P

Friday:

I spent the morning shadowing the nutritionists and the lactation consultant at WIC.  One of the appointments I was able to sit-in on was with a 3 day old baby and her mom.  She was so little and adorable!  One thing that I noticed is that the nutritionists, who have children, draw their personal experiences into the appointments more.  This seems to make clients feel more comfortable and understood which I totally understand.  As someone who doesn’t have children, I definitely feel strange educating parents on feeding their children.  As someone trained in nutrition, I do have the knowledge; I just don’t have the personal experience.  In the afternoon, my preceptor assigned me some reading to go over.  I read about pediatric obesity, the feeding behaviors of children, and breastfeeding preterm infants.  There’s always a lot to learn!

Saturday:

Caught up on some normal human stuff like laundry and grocery shopping.  I also finalized my FNCE schedule for the next 3 days, and did some homework for my night class.  

Sunday:

First full day of FNCE!  I’ll be making an extra “FNCE Recap” post next week, so stay tuned to read all about my experience at FNCE 2017.  After FNCE I attended the Loyola Dietetic Internship 20-year reunion at Loyola’s Water Tower campus (in Chicago).  It was really cool to get to meet LDI alumni and hear about their career paths.  We even had two alumni attend who were in the first graduating class of the Loyola DI!  I also reconnected with an alum who was part of my panel interview for the program which was really nice.  She was very excited that I accepted my match to Loyola, and even gave me her contact info in case I had any questions or concerns about the program or living in Illinois in general (SO sweet!).  Being in a room full of current and past Loyola DIs and hearing about all the amazing things they’re doing definitely made me feel like I chose an excellent program!

Next week, I’ll be at the rest of FNCE and then at WIC for the rest of the week.  Spencer will also be visiting me next weekend.  We’re going on a Halloween boat cruise on the Chicago River with one of the interns I met at the food pantry and her boyfriend, so stay tuned!