Strategies

Tailor health care to patients’ norms, beliefs, and values, as well as their language and literacy skills

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

Increase support for non-profit health care organizations and deliver comprehensive care to uninsured, underinsured, and vulnerable patients regardless of ability to pay; often called community health centers (CHCs)

Offer employees control over an aspect of their schedule through arrangements such as flex time, flex hours, compressed work weeks, or self-scheduled shift work

Increase healthy options in vending machines by reducing the price of healthy choices, increasing the number of healthy choices compared to unhealthy choices, etc.

Teach behavioral skills that can help individuals incorporate physical activity into their daily routines

Support a collaborative approach by a multidisciplinary team of professionals working to meet the full range of long-term care (LTC) needs for frail elderly patients living in community settings

Organize workers to bargain collectively for improved wages, benefits, and working conditions

Support a combination of land uses (e.g., residential, commercial, recreational) in development initiatives, often through zoning regulations or Smart Growth initiatives

Combine educational, environmental, and behavioral activities that increase physical activity and improve nutrition (e.g., nutrition education, aerobic/strength training, dietary prescriptions, etc.) in various settings