Barriers and facilitators to implementing continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in primary hospitals in Ethiopia: a qualitative study of healthcare providers' perspectives.

Poverty and economic disadvantage in early childhood are detrimental to children’s life chances and well-being in both the short- and long-term (; ). Importantly, child well-being reflects not only children’s current circumstances but also the accumulated household conditions they have been exposed to over time (; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ), making cumulative poverty a consequential factor in shaping developmental trajectories. Yet, early developmental stages are also periods of heightened sensitivity, offering a window of opportunity for children to build resilience. Public policies that reduce poverty and material hardship during these periods have the potential to buffer children from their harmful effects and help narrow socioeconomic disparities in child development. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as the largest federal food assistance program in the United States, offsets food costs and frees up a family’s economic resources. While SNAP is administered at the state level, 100% of its benefits are funded by the federal government. It is also an entitlement program, and as such, in the face of high inflation, the role of SNAP has been more essential than ever. SNAP offers economic and nutritional benefits to millions of low-income working and non-working individuals, including children, who make up the largest share of SNAP beneficiaries (). SNAP is a strong anti-poverty program; in 2022, the program lifted 3.7 million people out of poverty, as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (). However, there remains limited research on how SNAP benefits may affect children’s development, particularly in a cumulative manner, during early childhood. There are only a few studies that examined the associations between SNAP benefits and children’s cognitive and socioemotional development (; ; ). While there is a larger body of SNAP literature on child health, such as general health status (; ) and birth weight (; ), the literature finds somewhat mixed evidence, and there is still a lack of understanding of how SNAP affects child health in early childhood. Further, while prior research has shown that public benefits – including SNAP – may cumulatively shape child or family well-being (; ; ), fewer studies have considered the role of cumulative exposure to SNAP in the context of child development.