Strategies

Limit increases in the number and concentration of alcohol outlets by area or by population through licensing or zoning regulations

Use specialized courts to offer criminal offenders with drug dependency problems an alternative to adjudication or incarceration

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

Increase support for non-profit health care organizations and deliver comprehensive care to uninsured, underinsured, and vulnerable patients regardless of ability to pay; often called community health centers (CHCs)

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

Deliver educational, behavioral, environmental, and other obesity prevention efforts (e.g., education classes, enhanced physical education, healthy food promotion, family outreach, etc.) in schools

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

Provide health care services on school premises to attending elementary, middle, and high school students; physical and mental health services provided by teams of nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians

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

Provide reminders, education, or self-management assistance for health conditions, especially chronic diseases, via text message