Strategies

Establish publicly funded investment accounts for every newborn, accessible at age 18

Build assets through child development accounts (CDAs) with contributions from a sponsoring organization, such as government agencies or nonprofits, and family, friends; also called children’s savings accounts (CSAs)

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

Support financial institutions providing services to underserved and disadvantaged communities

Offer debt advice from trained providers to tenants with unpaid, overdue rent to help repay debt and increase financial literacy

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

Provide education on basic budgeting, bank use, credit management, bankruptcy, credit building and counseling, homeownership, retirement, divorce, etc.

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.

Apologize for discriminatory housing policies; increase subsidies, financing, and paths to homeownership for people of color; and invest in systematically disadvantaged neighborhoods

Support subsidized asset accumulation programs in which deposits by participants with low and moderate incomes are matched by program sponsors; withdrawals must be used for qualified expenses to retain matching funds

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

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

Support programs that provide matched dollar incentives for low or moderate income individuals to place some or all of their tax refund in a savings account

Support programs that provide small loans, usually to individuals with lower incomes, to start or expand a small business, often with business development training and other technical assistance

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

Regulate short-term loans that must be repaid by a borrower’s next pay day via bans, caps on maximum interest rates and loan amounts, or require minimum loan terms and credit cost

Apologize for the history and legacy of slavery and provide direct payments or community investments to Black descendants of people enslaved in the U.S.

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

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