No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section amends the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP)—which awards grants to governmental agencies and nonprofits to provide incentives for low-income Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants and Medicaid enrollees to increase fruits and vegetables purchases, often partnering with healthcare providers and emergency feeding organizations—as follows: (1) for food insecurity nutrition incentive grants, revises the federal cost share to 50 percent (with waivers for persistent poverty counties or census tracts having at least 20 percent poverty over the preceding 30-year period) and establishes cooperative agreements of at least four years with state SNAP agencies (or partnering nonprofits or local governments), Food and Nutrition Service, or National Institute of Food and Agriculture to scale existing programs, requiring prior grant recipients to spend at least 90 percent of funds on redeemed incentives at eligible retailers (with priority for projects in diverse retail settings such as independent retailers and farmers markets); (2) for the produce prescription program, establishes pilot grants ($100,000 to $400,000) to demonstrate impacts on dietary health, food insecurity, and healthcare costs and expansion grants ($1 million to $2.5 million) for clinical research with at least 300 patients, matched controls or scalability evidence, and 12-month interventions; adds criteria for seeding infrastructure or best practices; requires a review panel within one year of enactment; and directs a report within three years, with recommendations to transition payments to health insurance within 10 years; and (3) extends program authorization through FY2031 (from FY2023), provides $57.5 million annually for FY2027 through FY2031 and $56 million for FY2032 and each year thereafter, and allocates produce prescription funds 50 percent to pilot grants and 50 percent to expansion grants.