Strategies

Provide continuous, comprehensive, whole person primary care that uses a coordinated team of medical providers across the health care system

Allow eligible patients to use marijuana for medical purposes; often called medical marijuana laws (MMLs)

Integrate legal services into health care settings to address legal issues that affect health (e.g., housing, food, utilities); services provided by private practice lawyers, law students, etc.

Provide medications such as methadone to individuals diagnosed with opioid use disorder in outpatient, residential, and hospital settings, usually with counseling and behavioral therapies; often called MAT

Maintain the current legal age when an individual can purchase alcoholic beverages; currently 21 years in all states

Minimum legal tobacco age (MLTA) laws specify the legal age to purchase or publicly consume tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, and e-cigarettes

Provide a fixed, multi-component set of fall prevention interventions to older adults, usually in community settings, without an individualized risk assessment

Protect underground water resources via regular groundwater monitoring, education about risks to groundwater, water quotas and taxes, and other efforts

Distribute Naloxone to trained community members and first responders to reverse opioid overdoses

Use regulation to extend nurse practitioners’ (NPs’) scope of practice to provide care to the full scope of their training and skills without physician oversight, especially for primary care

Improve work environments for nurses via establishment of strong nursing leadership, organizational support, etc.

Support site-specific plans for crop production that match nutrient applications to crop needs, typically with agricultural best management practices

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

Use pervious concrete, porous asphalt, permeable interlocking pavers, open-jointed blocks or cells, or other permeable pavement in individual or commercial development efforts; also called porous or pervious pavement

Prohibit the manufacture, use, and provision of single-use plastic bags, either partially or completely, and provide education and outreach to raise consumer awareness and support of bans

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

Use ready-made or home constructed barrel systems to collect and store rainwater from rooftops that would otherwise flow to storm drains and streams

Establish bioretention systems (e.g., rain gardens, bioretention cells, green roofs, planter boxes, bioswales, etc.) to make city landscapes more permeable to help control stormwater

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

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

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

Teach students personal and social skills to avoid tobacco use; led by teachers, health educators, or students in elementary schools, middle schools, or high schools

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

Use counseling, informational materials, etc. to inform smokers and non-smokers of the harms of secondhand smoke and encourage them to implement home smoking bans

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

Implement private sector rules or public sector regulations that prohibit smoking indoors or restrict it to designated, often outdoor, areas

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

Implement private sector rules or public sector regulations that prohibit smoking outdoors or restrict it to designated areas

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

Coordinate state and community-level cessation and prevention interventions and provide information on the dangers of tobacco using a combination of educational, regulatory, clinical, social, and economic strategies

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

Encourage participants to quit using tobacco by a set date or during a specific time period and give successful participants a chance to win financial rewards or other prizes; often called Quit & Win contests

Reduce patients’ out-of-pocket costs for tobacco cessation therapies such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and cessation counseling participation

Limit promotion, placement, flavoring, or pricing of tobacco products via regulation

Deliver phone-based counseling to tobacco users who want to quit, usually with follow-up calls proactively scheduled after initial contact

Require retailers to purchase licenses to sell tobacco products; retailers must follow all tobacco control laws to keep licenses

Set the number, type, proximity, and density of tobacco retailers, especially near homes and schools, via state or local zoning, licensing restrictions, or other regulations