How do social and domestic policies protect the health and well being of poor, retired, or low income Americans?

I'm going to be using one policy as a case study.

There exist a policy called in-kind benefits which are a non-cash benefits focused on providing low-income individual with goods and services they need the most, examples of such are food, clothing, shelter. This policy protects the health and well-being of low income individuals in a way that they have basic necessities such as food and clothing and are hereby not exposed to problems such as malnutrition, unavailability of a place to rest among others.