Strategies

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

Support multi-component educational interventions for college students that address nutrition, physical activity, and healthy weight management; often with environmental modifications

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

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.

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

Place motivational signs on posters, front of package labels, or shelf labels near fruits, vegetables, and other items that encourage individuals to purchase healthier food options

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

Provide nutrition information on menus and signboards at restaurants and other food outlets

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.