EVERYONE BELONGS IN POLICY CONVERSATIONS

Because all Southerners deserve to be heard, we champion innovative and equitable approaches to centering the communities most impacted by policy change.

Partnering With Propel

Centering community voice, the perspectives and experiences of people most affected by policy, is a pillar of SEAP’s approach to advancing progressive policy across the South. All too often policies are created and implemented without meaningful input from the communities they affect. We believe everyone belongs in policymaking conversations and have partnered with Propel, a benefits management app used by SNAP-eligible families, to connect with low-income households to gather insights about their needs, priorities, and how public dollars can be used to help every family thrive.

WIC in Alabama

Policy Question: How can WIC work better for mothers and families in both application process and service delivery?

Timeframe: Late 2024—Early 2025

Respondents: 429 Alabama mothers

Policy Answer: Alabama families using WIC found it positively impacts their lives and health, proving WIC is a program worth supporting and defending.

Learn more about SEAP’s food security work here.

Summer EBT in Mississippi

Policy Question: How are current summer feeding programs working for families, and what would additional SNAP benefits mean during summer break?

Survey Timeframe: October 2024

Respondents: 1,572 Mississippi parents

Policy Answer: Mississippi families sometimes need additional support providing enough food during summer months, and one such solution would be implementing SUN Bucks.

Learn more about SEAP’s work to support SUN Bucks implementation here.

Medicaid Unwinding in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina

Policy Question: Are community members aware of why they’re losing Medicaid coverage via redetermination, and are they being adequately served by Medicaid navigators?

As pandemic protections ended, each state began a Medicaid unwinding process to disenroll members that no longer qualified for benefits. SEAP supported outreach efforts in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina by working to fill the gaps identified by local advocates. In addition to community-led outreach, SEAP ran ads on Propel’s app to connect households across the region to navigators and survey households on whether those navigators met their needs.

Survey Timeframe: March—May 2024

Respondents: 497 Medicaid users

Policy Answer: The call lines had real shortcomings and surfacing this issue in real time created an opportunity to provide guidance to callers on how best to connect.

Learn more about SEAP’s Medicaid redetermination outreach here.

Learning Through Listening: What We've Learned From Community-Centered Data

Since 2020, SEAP has performed seven surveys and two initial pilot surveys on the Propel app to bring the voices of more than 10,000 low-income Southerners into policy conversations. The Propel app is a financial management tool that millions of households use to manage their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

This report reviews those survey efforts and provides key learnings and action items for building a community-driven and equitable approach to policy change and implementation, including:

Create a data partner ecosystem including techplatforms, community partners, local government, and researchers
Surface new ideas and value the qualitative results gained from open-ended questions
Use data for external purposes (policy advocacy) and internal purposes
Let communities identify what’s working AND what’s not working

We’ve compiled a look back at all our surveys, learnings and takeaways, and resources into a learnings report.