Strategies

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

105 Strategies
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Child care subsidies

Provide financial assistance to working parents, or parents attending school, to pay for child care

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Income

Child firearm access prevention laws

Impose penalties on adults for a child’s unsupervised access to firearms

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Community Safety

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for offenders

Use individual or group therapy to help offenders discover and change the thought processes that lead to maladaptive behavior

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Community Safety

Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs)

Provide funding for local community development activities such as affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit

Community policing

Implement a policing philosophy based on community partnership, organizational transformation, and problem solving techniques to proactively address public safety issues: also called community-oriented policing

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Community Safety

Complete Streets & streetscape design initiatives

Enhance streetscapes with greater sidewalk coverage and walkway connectivity, street crossing safety features, traffic calming measures, and other design elements

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Housing and Transit
  • Diet and Exercise

Comprehensive risk reduction sexual education

Provide information about contraception and protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in classroom or community settings

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Sexual Activity

Cultural competence training for health care professionals

Increase health care providers’ skills and knowledge to understand and respond to cultural differences, value diversity, etc. via factual information, skills training, and other efforts

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Quality of Care

Culturally adapted health care

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

Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported
  • Quality of Care