Strategies

What Works for Health includes evidence-informed strategies to create communities where everyone can thrive.

118 Strategies
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Promise Academy Charter Schools

Create a school culture of high behavioral and academic expectations, with intense tutoring, increased teacher performance feedback, lengthened instruction time, and health care services

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Education

Proper drug disposal programs

Establish programs that accept expired, unwanted, or unused medicines from designated users and dispose of them responsibly

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Alcohol and Drug Use
  • Air and Water Quality

Public deliberations

Bring people with diverse values and perspectives together to engage in facilitated, inclusive, and informed dialogues about a topic of public concern. Examples include Citizens’ Initiative Reviews, deliberative polling, citizen juries, and citizen’s assemblies.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Family and Social Support

Public libraries for community building

Lend materials, offer gathering space, and provide educational, civic, and social programming; open to the community and publicly funded

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Family and Social Support

Public reporting of health care quality performance

Make clinician, hospital, clinic, long-term care facility, and insurance plan performance on health care quality measures publicly available via report cards, reporting websites, or similar tools

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Quality of Care

Public reporting of health care-associated infections

Make health care facilities’ health care-associated or hospital-acquired infection (HAI) rates readily available to patients and providers

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Quality of Care

Radon mitigation programs

Prevent radon from entering occupied buildings and reduce existing indoor air radon levels via soil depressurization, home or room pressurization, heat recovery ventilation, etc.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit

Rapid re-housing programs

Transition families and individuals experiencing homelessness into permanent housing quickly, often with supports such as short-term financial assistance, case management, landlord negotiations, etc.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit

Reach Out and Read

Partner with doctors, nurse practitioners, and other medical professionals to incorporate literacy support into regular well-child visits, especially in lower income communities

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Education