Strategies

Establish a break from the school day, typically before lunch, that involves planned, inclusive, actively supervised games or activities; also called semi-structured, or structured recess

Offer group educational, social, creative, musical, or physical activities that promote social interactions, regular attendance, and community involvement among older adults

Provide education, information, counseling, and support for breastfeeding to women throughout pre- and post-natal care

Use a case management model for frail elderly patients living independently, coordinating aspects of long-term care (LTC) such as status assessment, monitoring, advocacy, care planning, etc.

Use existing kitchen spaces for community members to share knowledge, resources, and labor to prepare, cook, and consume food, often with nutrition education provided for participants experiencing food insecurity

Assign higher costs to non-nutritious foods than nutritious foods via incentives, subsidies, or price discounts for healthy foods and beverages or disincentives or price increases for unhealthy choices

Enhance streetscapes with greater sidewalk coverage and walkway connectivity, street crossing safety features, traffic calming measures, and other design elements

Increase health care providers’ skills and knowledge to understand and respond to cultural differences, value diversity, etc. via factual information, skills training, and other efforts

Offer participants with low incomes matching funds to purchase healthy foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables; often called bonus dollars, market bucks, produce coupons, or nutrition incentives

Modify the school lunch food environment or school lunch schedules by increasing the convenience of healthy foods, providing healthy options, or ensuring students have enough time to eat

Increase healthy options in vending machines by reducing the price of healthy choices, increasing the number of healthy choices compared to unhealthy choices, etc.

Establish national standards for the colors of patient wristbands used to alert health care providers about specific conditions such as allergies or elevated fall risk

Support a collaborative approach by a multidisciplinary team of professionals working to meet the full range of long-term care (LTC) needs for frail elderly patients living in community settings

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

Provide continuous, comprehensive, whole person primary care that uses a coordinated team of medical providers across the health care system

Support a combination of land uses (e.g., residential, commercial, recreational) in development initiatives, often through zoning regulations or Smart Growth initiatives

Provide a fixed, multi-component set of fall prevention interventions to older adults, usually in community settings, without an individualized risk assessment

Use regulation to extend nurse practitioners’ (NPs’) scope of practice to provide care to the full scope of their training and skills without physician oversight, especially for primary care

Offer young children opportunities to eat healthy foods and engage in physical activity by providing fresh fruits and vegetables, incorporating physical activity into daily classroom routines, etc.

Use payments, vouchers, and other incentives to encourage patients to undergo preventive care such as screenings, vaccinations, etc.

Incorporate classroom-based physical activities, such as classroom energizers, into academic lessons or as a break, usually for elementary students

Modify local environments to support physical activity, increase access to new or existing facilities for physical activity, or build new facilities

Place motivational signs on or near stairwells, elevators, and escalators that encourage individuals to use stairs

Provide interpretation services for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) in outpatient and inpatient health care settings, following training and certification

Conduct individual assessments that gauge older adults’ risk of falling and develop personalized approaches to help prevent falls

Promote walking and biking to school through education, incentives, and environmental changes; often called SRTS

Support programs to provide students with a nutritious breakfast in the cafeteria, from grab and go carts in hallways, or in classrooms

Establish designated areas where students can garden with guidance, often with nutrition and food preparation lessons and opportunities for taste tasting and hands-on learning

Regulate the quality of food that can be sold to students through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), à la carte options, vending machines, etc.

Expand or enhance school-based physical education (PE) by lengthening existing classes, increasing physical activity during class, adding new PE classes, etc.

Encourage children to spend time away from TV and other stationary screen media, often as part of a multi-faceted effort to increase physical activity and improve nutrition

Increase the price of sugar sweetened beverages (e.g., soda) by adding an excise or sales tax

Make water readily available in various settings via regular placement of drinking fountains, water coolers, bottled water in vending machines, etc.

Use educational, environmental, and behavioral strategies to improve food choices and physical activity opportunities in worksite settings, also called workplace health programs

Reform zoning regulations to remove exclusionary zoning codes, address physical environment aesthetics and safety, street continuity and connectivity, residential density, and mixed-use development, etc.