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COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article

Front. Nutr.

Sec. Food Policy and Economics

This article is part of the Research TopicNutrition and Public Health Perspectives for FutureView all articles

Navigating SNAP Waiver Submissions: An Iowa Case Study

Provisionally accepted
Lyndi Buckingham-SchuttLyndi Buckingham-Schutt1*Rebecca BucklinRebecca Bucklin2,3Brandi JanssenBrandi Janssen4,5Joelle JohnsonJoelle Johnson6Natoshia AskelsonNatoshia Askelson3
  • 1Iowa State University Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Ames, United States
  • 2College of Public Health, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, United States
  • 3The University of Iowa Department of Community and Behavioral Health, Iowa City, United States
  • 4University of Iowa Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Iowa City, United States
  • 5The University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, United States
  • 6Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, United States

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This case study describes the process to assess the need, gather information, build partnerships, and develop an evaluation for a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waiver application to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would have allowed the state of Iowa to test healthy food incentives paired with disincentives. These waivers to test SNAP purchase restrictions and disincentives have been proposed at the national level and have received support from multiple states across the country. Following the rejection of a request to Iowa Health and Human Services (Iowa HHS) to submit a waiver to USDA in November 2024, we conducted a post-hoc evaluation of our efforts to develop the proposed waiver with a focus on building strategic partnerships with state officials and other essential partners. We will present the steps taken by the research team to build partnerships with state officials (including challenges experienced with maintaining these partnerships) and the other types of partners who were recruited to move the waiver application forward. We also describe the hurdles that we were unable to overcome and why these hurdles remain despite our efforts. The successes, challenges, and pitfalls of this project offer insights for investigators and state planners hoping to submit similar waiver applications to the USDA.

Keywords: keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4, keyword5, Nutrition incentives, Partnership development, policy

Received: 19 Dec 2025; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.

Copyright: © 2026 Buckingham-Schutt, Bucklin, Janssen, Johnson and Askelson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Lyndi Buckingham-Schutt

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material