Strategies

Emphasize high expectations for all students, parent and student commitment, empowered principals, and regular student assessments that inform continuous improvement in a lengthened school-year and school-day

Acquire, hold, manage, and develop properties such as vacant lots, abandoned buildings, or foreclosures, and transition them to productive uses, often affordable housing developments

Return the rights to land, property, and resources to Native people as part of policies and initiatives that promote tribal sovereignty

Delay school start times for middle and high schools to better align with adolescent sleep-wake cycles; often until after 8:30 or 9:00 a.m.

Eliminate lead-based paint and contaminated dust by removing or encapsulating lead paint, or removing lead painted fixtures and surfaces

Provide legal representation for tenants with low incomes in eviction proceedings or offer limited legal assistance to prepare tenants to represent themselves in court

Provide funds to households with low incomes to meet home energy needs, especially for households with children, older adults, or individuals with disabilities

Provide funding via tax credits at the state and local level to support development and rehabilitation costs of low income rental housing

Use mass media campaigns to persuade individuals to avoid drinking and driving or to prevent others from doing so; campaigns often focus on the negative consequences of alcohol-impaired driving

Use television, radio, print, and social media efforts to increase awareness of underage drinking and its consequences

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

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

Provide an 8 or 12 hour training to educate laypeople about how to assist individuals with mental health problems or at risk for problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders

Establish programs that connect students at risk of dropping out with trained adult mentors who provide ongoing guidance for academic and personal challenges

Pair youth at risk for delinquent behavior with mentors to develop relationships and spend time at regular meetings for an extended period; mentors have greater knowledge, skills, etc. than mentees

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

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

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

Provide physical infrastructure (e.g., bike parking or showers), educational or social support (e.g., walking groups), and financial incentives that support active commuting

Use an intensive, family- and community-based intervention that addresses individual, family and environmental risk factors that affect antisocial behaviors among serious juvenile offenders

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

Help men improve their parenting skills and fathering knowledge via a voluntary, comprehensive fatherhood program

Connect incarcerated fathers to their families and prepare them for release via small group education sessions that address fathering knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors

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

Support the efforts of neighborhood residents to work together in preventing crime by reporting suspicious or potentially criminal behavior to local law enforcement

Focus heavily on reading and math achievement, enforce high behavioral expectations through a formal discipline system, lengthen instructional time, and increase feedback on teacher performance

Provide home visiting services to low income, first time mothers and their babies, starting during pregnancy and continuing through a child’s second birthday

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

Establish roads that avoid built-up areas such as towns, cities, or commercial/business districts

Support outdoor pursuits and adventure-based activities that emphasize inter- and intra-personal growth through overcoming obstacles (e.g., challenge courses, wilderness excursions, etc.)

Support home visits that teach parents about early childhood development and effective parenting strategies, with child development screenings, parental meetings, and links to community resources

Engage community members to determine how public budgets are spent, ideally to improve neighborhood conditions and reduce inequality.

Teach positively stated behavior expectations to all students, often reinforced with prizes or privileges and supported with coaching and data

Support quality improvement efforts in early child care and preschool via financial incentives, standards, processes to monitor standards and ensure compliance, etc.

Provide center-based programs that support cognitive and social-emotional growth among children who are not old enough to enter formal schooling

Provide center-based programs that support cognitive and social development among young children from families with low incomes, with supports such as home visiting or parental education

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

Allow law enforcement officials to stop drivers solely for failing to use a seat belt

Create a school culture of high behavioral and academic expectations, with intense tutoring, increased teacher performance feedback, lengthened instruction time, and health care services

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

Bring people with diverse values and perspectives together to engage in facilitated, inclusive, and informed dialogues about a topic of public concern. Examples include Citizens’ Initiative Reviews, deliberative polling, citizen juries, and citizen’s assemblies.

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

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.)

Provide publicly funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) education to 3- and 4-year-olds, through large-scale or universal efforts

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.

Partner with doctors, nurse practitioners, and other medical professionals to incorporate literacy support into regular well-child visits, especially in lower income communities

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

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.