Strategies

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

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

Use visual tools to prompt safe practices, standardize communication, and ensure no step is forgotten before, during, or after a medical procedure or other health care situation

Support joint decision making between health care practitioners and patients through shared decision making (SDM); part of patient-centered care

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

Engage practice coaches or facilitators to work with primary care clinic staff to redesign clinical practices, organize quality improvement efforts, improve communication, share best practices, etc.

Use databases, housed in state agencies, to track prescribing and dispensing of Schedule II, III, IV, and V drugs and other controlled substances

Make pricing for hospital procedures and other health care services publicly available, often via websites, online databases, report cards, or similar tools

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

Establish programs that accept expired, unwanted, or unused medicines from designated users and dispose of them responsibly

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

Make health care facilities’ health care-associated or hospital-acquired infection (HAI) rates readily available to patients and providers

Introduce or expand transportation options that are available to the public and run on a scheduled timetable (e.g., buses, trains, ferries, rapid transit, etc.)

Prevent radon from entering occupied buildings and reduce existing indoor air radon levels via soil depressurization, home or room pressurization, heat recovery ventilation, etc.

Transition families and individuals experiencing homelessness into permanent housing quickly, often with supports such as short-term financial assistance, case management, landlord negotiations, etc.

Allow adults to possess a limited amount of marijuana for personal, non-medical use

Offer a refundable tax credit to working families with qualifying children or other dependents that receive care outside the home (e.g., a spouse with disabilities)

Establish tenant protections via regulations to the housing rental market such as limits on rent increases and eviction protections for tenants with low incomes; typically via rent stabilization

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.

Educate owners, managers, servers, and sellers at alcohol establishments about strategies to avoid illegally selling alcohol to underage youth or intoxicated patrons

Repeal government control over retail sales of alcoholic beverages, allowing commercial retailing of those beverages

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

Establish transportation services for areas with low population densities using publicly funded buses and vans on a set schedule, dial-a-ride transit, volunteer ridesharing, etc.

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

Increase enforcement of laws that prohibit alcoholic beverage service to intoxicated customers, usually with fines, imprisonment, or revocation of a license

Promote abstinence from sexual activity, generally only with mention of condoms and birth control to highlight failure rates

Provide reproductive health care services such as counseling, contraception, and testing in middle and high school-based health centers

Require a minimum age for sellers in off-premise locations that sell alcohol and servers and bartenders in on-premise locations

Provide permanent, basic rental housing with social services available on-site or by referral, usually for families with low incomes, older adults, veterans, or people with disabilities

Adopt laws that hold private property owners who provide alcohol to minors or obviously intoxicated individuals on their property liable if someone is killed or injured as a result

Provide objective, normative information to reduce college students’ misperceptions about alcohol use and, ultimately, change their drinking behavior

Establish state level regulations that require nursing homes to employ at least a set number of licensed and non-licensed nursing staff, often set in terms of staff hours per resident day

Explore ways to increase Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program benefit amounts for aged, blind, or disabled individuals, including children, with little or no income

Provide sterile injection equipment and often other treatment and referral services to people who inject drugs; also called needle or syringe exchange programs and needle syringe programs

Create designated tax districts that generate revenue to invest in affordable housing initiatives, blight remediation, and economic development efforts

Support school-, community-, and clinic-based teen pregnancy prevention programs such as comprehensive sex education, HIV/STI prevention and youth development efforts, service learning, etc.

Modify the built environment to affect traffic speed and patterns via speed humps, pedestrian center crossing islands, roundabouts, etc.

Shift the way health care organizations approach trauma by adopting universal trauma precautions and providing trauma-specific care

Increase compensation provided to unemployed workers looking for jobs by expanding eligibility, amount, or duration of benefits

Provide all individuals with regular cash transfers, without conditions, over their lifetimes

Provide all students with the information and skills to prevent alcohol use; programs can be delivered via a specific curriculum or as a component of classroom behavior management

Create financial incentives or remove financial disincentives to affect consumer choices and incentivize provision of cost efficient health care services

Use the purchasing power of employers and groups of insured individuals to create incentives and disincentives for health care providers to deliver high quality, high value care

Arrange active transportation with a fixed route, designated stops, and pick up times when children can walk to school with adult chaperones

Provide assistance to families with low incomes to make their homes more energy efficient and to permanently reduce their energy bills

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.