Strategies

What Works for Health includes evidence-informed strategies to create communities where everyone can thrive.

37 Strategies
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Microfinance & microenterprise

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

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Income

Neighborhood associations

Establish voluntary formal groups of residents who work together to create a unified voice, enhance living conditions in their neighborhood, and address neighborhood concerns

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Family and Social Support

Open Streets

Allow community members to gather, socialize, walk, run, bike, skate, etc. on streets temporarily to closed to motorized traffic; also called Ciclovía programs

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Diet and Exercise
  • Family and Social Support

Proper drug disposal programs

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

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Alcohol and Drug Use
  • Air and Water Quality

Public libraries for community building

Lend materials, offer gathering space, and provide educational, civic, and social programming; open to the community and publicly funded

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Family and Social Support

Refundable child and dependent care tax credit

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)

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Income

Scrap programs for old vehicles

Provide incentives to trade in old cars or light duty trucks with low fuel efficiency and high emissions and buy new vehicles with higher efficiency and lower emissions; also called scrappage or vehicle early retirement programs

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Air and Water Quality

Smoke-free policies for multi-unit housing

Implement private sector rules or public sector regulations that prohibit smoking in and around multi-unit housing

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Tobacco Use

Social host laws

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

Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion
  • Alcohol and Drug Use