Strategies

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

21 Strategies
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Community arts programs

Support locally-based visual, media, and performing arts initiatives for children and adults; also called participatory arts programs

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Family and Social Support

Community centers

Provide space to promote socializing among community members and offer programs and services such as recreational or educational activities, counseling or support services

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Family and Social Support

Comprehensive risk reduction sexual education

Provide information about contraception and protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in classroom or community settings

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Sexual Activity

Condom availability programs

Provide condoms free of charge or at a reduced cost in community and school-based settings

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Sexual Activity

Exercise prescriptions

Provide patients with prescriptions for exercise plans, often accompanied by progress checks at office visits, counseling, activity logs, and exercise testing

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Diet and Exercise

Financial rewards for employee healthy behavior

Offer payments, credits toward health insurance premiums, or other financial rewards to encourage employees to lose weight, eat more healthily, quit smoking, engage in physical activity, etc.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Diet and Exercise

Grocery, housing & utilities cooperatives

Establish a non-share capital cooperative model in which fee-paying members can share the communal resources of a grocery, house, or utility cooperative

Evidence Rating:
Insufficient Evidence
  • Family and Social Support

Land return for tribal restitution

Return the rights to land, property, and resources to Native people as part of policies and initiatives that promote tribal sovereignty

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Income
  • Family and Social Support

Mass media campaigns for physical activity

Provide messages that support physical activity to large and broad audiences using television, social media, radio, billboards, newspapers, and other print media

Evidence Rating:
Insufficient Evidence
  • Diet and Exercise