Multilingual Communication Expands Access to WIC Benefits in New York State

In New York, more than 200 languages are spoken at home. For public health programs like WIC—the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program—this diversity presents both a challenge and an opportunity. When families cannot read or fully understand WIC information, they may miss out on benefits that support their health and nutrition.

Public Health Solutions (PHS), one of the state’s largest public health nonprofits, recently led an initiative to make WIC materials available in 18 languages. The goal was simple but vital: ensure that every parent, caregiver, and child in New York can access WIC guidance in their own language.

Accurate translation of public health materials is more than a technical task; it’s a matter of equity.

Meeting Families Where They Are

The project involved translating six WIC food-package leaflets into the 18 languages most frequently used by WIC participants across the state, including Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Arabic, Russian, Yiddish, French, Haitian Creole, Urdu, Uzbek, Nepali, Dari, Burmese, Swahili, Karen, Pashto, Ukrainian, and Hindi. These languages reflect the state’s vibrant mix of immigrant and refugee communities, from long-established Chinese- and Spanish-speaking populations to newly arrived families from Central Asia and East Africa.

PHS partnered with GTS Translation Services to coordinate the multilingual production. Because the original English leaflets were available only as PDFs, GTS recreated them in Adobe InDesign so translators could work directly with editable IDML files. Each version had to retain the exact layout of the original English version while staying concise and culturally clear—a careful balance when every word affects readability and space on the printed page.

Equity Through Language

Accurate translation of public health materials is more than a technical task; it’s a matter of equity. The project followed detailed linguistic guidelines to keep terms like “WIC” in English, preserve U.S. measurement units, and use simple, friendly phrasing appropriate for a sixth- to seventh-grade reading level. Each translation was reviewed by native translators to ensure clarity and to avoid any mention of ingredients that may pose cultural or religious taboos. For example, confirming that food-related terms such as “canned fish” or “infant cereal” were familiar and worded appropriately in each language and community context.

Rudy Sicari, director of WIC vendor management at PHS, explained the importance of this work:

“Ensuring that WIC program information is available in so many languages is vital to serving New York’s diverse communities. At Public Health Solutions, we are committed to equity and accessibility, and this project helps us make sure all families can benefit from WIC resources regardless of the language they speak at home.”

The Bigger Picture

This collaboration illustrates how practical partnerships can advance language access in public health. While the translation of leaflets may seem straightforward, the process presented real challenges, from managing 18 distinct languages to fitting translations into fixed design layouts originally built for English.

Projects like this show how health agencies, nonprofits, and service partners can bridge the gap between policy and real-world access.

One of the key linguistic challenges was ensuring the right local language variant so native speakers in New York could read the materials naturally and without confusion. For example, Yiddish has been spoken in New York for well over a century and differs significantly from the Yiddish used in other parts of the world. From a design perspective, another challenge was to change the layout to a right-to-left format for Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, and Yiddish.

Through close coordination between PHS and GTS, translators received editable InDesign files and worked under unified formatting and linguistic guidelines, ensuring consistency across all versions. The results were clear: a greater understanding of WIC benefits, higher program participation, and improved trust between agencies and the communities they serve.

New York’s Language Access Law requires state agencies to translate vital documents into the 12 most common non-English languages spoken by residents. PHS went further, including additional languages such as Karen, Nepali, Uzbek, and Pashto—communities whose populations are smaller but whose need for clear, accessible information is significant. By expanding beyond the state’s mandate, PHS ensured that families from emerging immigrant and refugee groups were not left out of the conversation.

Projects like this show how health agencies, nonprofits, and service partners can bridge the gap between policy and real-world access. They also highlight the essential role of multilingual communication in achieving equity—a goal that depends not only on funding or outreach, but on being understood.