The Department of Health conducted a Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new Women, Infant and Children (WIC) Program building on St. Thomas on Tuesday, September 28th . The new 5,200 square foot, state-of-the-art structure will serve as a centralized, service location for the more than 3,000 participants of the WIC Program on the island of St. Thomas.

During Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 the structure suffered extreme infrastructure damage rendering the building unusable as the headquarters for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) on St. Thomas.

The $3.7 million being used for the construction of the new St. Thomas building are part of an original $6,465,446 grant provided in 2018 by the August 2018 US Department of Agriculture award to the U.S. Virgin Islands (VI) Department of Health’s (DOH) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

The Virgin Islands Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is a 100 percent federally funded nutrition program of the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) within the US Department of Agriculture. The WIC Program provides supplemental foods and nutrition education at no cost, as well as referrals to other health care and social service programs and agencies to eligible participants. WIC participants are low income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, infants, and children up to age five.