An Examination of Virginia's Adult SNAP-Ed Program by Cost-Effectiveness Using Program Cost and Participant Self-Evaluations

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) is an extension of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that aims to promote living healthier lifestyles for low-income participants of SNAP with limited resources. This thesis aims to investigate the effectiveness of Virginia's adult SNAP-Ed program through a cost-effective analysis (CEA) for fiscal year 2013 which requires the separation of the into the costs and the effects of the program. The costs for the program are categories as the labor, capital, material, and utility costs that are required to implement the adult SNAP-Ed program. The effects are measured as the number of participants who start, graduate, and improve from the start to the end of the program. The effects were measured on a retrospective self-assessment that measured both if a participant graduated and their magnitude of improvement. The analysis showed that as the state of Virginia the adult SNAP-Ed program incurred a cost of $2,488,170.07 with 6,759 participants starting the program and 3,704 of those that graduated in fiscal year 2013. Participants that improved on at least one of the questions by a score of one were 3,609 of the 3,704 that graduated. For the state of Virginia the cost effective ratio (CER) for starting a participant was $368 and CER of $672 for each graduated participant. An improvement on at least one question saw a CER value of $689. These findings show patterns that can be used for future policy implementation and the focus of the program.