Strategies

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.

Increase patients’ health-related knowledge via efforts to simplify health education materials, improve patient-provider communication, and increase overall literacy

Delay school start times for middle and high schools to better align with adolescent sleep-wake cycles; often until 8:30 a.m. or later

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

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

Provide culturally sensitive assistance and care coordination, and guide patients through available medical, insurance, and social support; also called systems navigators

Teach positively stated behavior expectations to all students, often reinforced with prizes or privileges and supported with coaching and data

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

Require school officials to apply predetermined consequences for certain infractions, regardless of situational context or circumstances; consequences are usually severe (e.g., suspension or expulsion)