Before running for county commissioner in Lane County, Laurie Trieger had long admired the number of county-provided services like the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which aims to help pregnant and postpartum people, along with young children, access proper nutrition.
Now, Trieger and WIC recipients face the challenges and impacts of H.R. 1, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which aims to cut wrap-around services that help new moms in Lane County. Although the cuts don’t pose a direct threat to WIC, the cuts have impacted surrounding factors, making program-users more vulnerable.
“Dating back about 40 years, when I wasn’t thinking of it as a county service, I was a WIC mom,” says Trieger, who represents the county’s District 3, South Eugene. “I came into the role of county commissioner with this really deep and personal understanding of how important that program is to new families.”
Trieger moved from Philadelphia to Yachats in 1984, where the nearest WIC office was 60 miles away. Still, she visited the WIC clinic monthly to connect with a public health nurse, have her baby weighed and get reassurance that her child was developing properly.
“They also just supported me and reassured me, and provided me with information that I needed to make sure I was doing OK. There are very few times more vulnerable than when you have a new baby in your life.”
WIC is a special supplemental nutrition program for families that are pregnant, nursing or have children under 5 and either meet Lane County’s income guideline or are enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Oregon Health Plan. WIC offers nutrition vouchers, education, lactation support and general healthy nutritional foods.
“It is specifically designed to ensure good nutrition for pregnant and postpartum women and children under 5, because those are the critical years for nutrition, brain development, physical development and overall health,” Trieger says.
A main factor that differentiates WIC from SNAP is that the vouchers can only be used to buy certain products, such as milk, eggs, infant formula and fresh produce. WIC vouchers also differ with participants that are breastfeeding to match the particular nutritional needs for the infant and mother.
Lane County’s WIC program recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, and has served 9,414 participants, for a total of 5,403 families in 2025. WIC participants have spent nearly $5 million at the 43 county-wide participating stores.
Lane County also offers a farm-direct nutrition program that provides families a direct source to buy groceries from farmers. As of 2025, there are 49 participating farms at local farmers markets, and $50,944 farm-direct dollars have gone to local farmers.
For pregnant people, infants and children, constant access to nutrition remains crucial in maintaining proper health and staying on track for development, Trieger says.
“Proper nutrition is the building block for these things,” says Alisha Pierzina, Lane County Family & Child Health nursing supervisor. “While you’re pregnant, your body takes on all of the fuel, and the food is helping to create this child.”
For 12 years, Pierzina was a registered nurse involved with the Lane County Nurse Family Partnership program for home visits, which aims to help low-income families with prenatal care. She explains that when there isn’t proper access to calcium and potassium, or if there are imbalances with sodium, then babies can be born with abnormalities.
Pierzina says that during pregnancy the body extracts phosphorus and calcium from within its bones, and if postpartum people aren’t able to access the correct nutrition to rebuild those minerals, they can be more likely to develop osteoporosis and fractures.
“It can also mean that if you go on to have another baby, that baby doesn’t get as high quality of nutrition as your first baby. And that’s one of those multi-generation impacts from poor nutrition in pregnancy and postpartum,” says Rowen Nido, Lane County senior community health analyst.
Food insecurity remains a prevalent problem in Lane County, with the 2024 Feeding America study estimating at 16.2 percent of people experiencing food insecurity, with 34 percent of people above the SNAP threshold.
“Ninety-six percent of WIC participants are also enrolled in Oregon Health Plan Medicaid, and more than half are enrolled in SNAP,” Trieger says.
Although H.R. 1, did not impose direct cuts to WIC, the passed bill will have direct impacts on WIC participants through a mechanism called adjunct eligibility. This allows families to qualify for WIC by providing proof of participation in other income-based government programs such as Medicaid and SNAP. The current bill requires families to reapply for SNAP and Medicaid eligibility, which creates long application wait times and the hassle of finding documents to prove their original eligibility.
“They are creating extraordinary hurdles for families to jump through,” Trieger says.. “That is part of H.R. 1 and that creates more administrative burden and bureaucratic layers.”
Although WIC eligibility is not dependent on SNAP or Medicaid enrollment, Trieger expects that this new rule will require more WIC staff time to be dedicated to facilitating federal administrative work, rather than providing direct services to infants and pregnant people.
“We currently have a federal administration that claims it wants to protect women and girls and yet is doing everything it can to make their lives less safe and more difficult,” Trieger says.
Current impacts to HR 1 are expected to cut between $911 billion to $990 billion in federal funding for Medicaid in 10 years, with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s staff at the latest health care town hall in Eugene predicting that 244,900 more Oregonians will lose Medicaid in the next 10 years.
“I run our family advisory board, so folks who are either on our services or who recently graduate our services come and talk about some of the challenges that they’re having in the community, and good resources are a really big one,” says Rowen Nido, Lane County senior community health analyst.
She recalls a family who went to recertify their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) qualifications, and their award went from almost $300 a month to $7 a month. Cost of food has increased between 30 to 32 percent since 2020 according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Congressional Budget Office also expects a decrease of $35 billion of SNAP benefits in the next 10 years. Around 35,000 Oregonians have lost their SNAP benefits in the past year as a result of these cuts.
“WIC is primarily prevention work — there’s the saying a penny of prevention is worth a pound in care,” Trieger says. “We make sure people stay healthy and we reduce costs downstream.”
WIC locations are currently open in Cottage Grove, Eugene, Florence and Oakridge. Contact 541-682-4202 for more information.