Strategies

Establish designated areas where students can garden with guidance, often with nutrition and food preparation lessons and opportunities for taste tasting and hands-on learning

Prohibit the sale of unhealthy foods such as sugar sweetened beverages, candy, and other non-nutritious snacks at school fundraisers, often as part of a broader nutrition policy

Regulate the quality of food that can be sold to students through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), à la carte options, vending machines, etc.

Promote abstinence from sexual activity, generally only with mention of condoms and birth control to highlight failure rates

Provide health care services on school premises to attending elementary, middle, and high school students; physical and mental health services provided by teams of nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians

Provide reproductive health care services such as counseling, contraception, and testing in middle and high school-based health centers

Provide youth with teen dating violence education that addresses healthy relationships, gender norms, relationship coercion, and violence in a school setting

Address nutrition in schools via educational (e.g., classroom or curricula-wide efforts, peer training, etc.), environmental (e.g., school menus, classroom snacks, etc.), and other approaches

Expand or enhance school-based physical education (PE) by lengthening existing classes, increasing physical activity during class, adding new PE classes, etc.

Implement focused efforts to help children recognize and manage emotions, set and reach goals, appreciate others’ perspectives, and maintain relationships; also called social and emotional learning (SEL)

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

Help students process trauma exposure and develop coping skills through individual or small group counseling with mental health professionals or school staff with trauma-specific training

Address students’ disruptive and antisocial behavior by teaching self-awareness, emotional self-control, self-esteem, social problem solving, conflict resolution, team work, social skills, etc.

Provide students from public schools, from low income backgrounds, or who have a high risk of dropping out and their families with information about social services and health care supports; also called community resource or family and community liaisons

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

Encourage children to spend time away from TV and other stationary screen media, often as part of a multi-faceted effort to increase physical activity and improve nutrition

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

Provide industry-focused education and job training based on the needs of regional employers within specific sectors

Create contracts that support community access to existing public, private, or nonprofit facilities before or after business hours; also called joint use, open use, or community use agreements

Reduce the number of students in elementary school classrooms

Provide comprehensive early childhood services, including high quality educational child care, health, and family support to address local needs

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

Provide objective, normative information to reduce college students’ misperceptions about alcohol use and, ultimately, change their drinking behavior

Educate youth and college athletes, coaches, and parents about the severity of concussions in sports, proper prevention, detection, reporting, and treatment

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

Provide academic instruction to students during the summer, often along with enrichment activities such as art or outdoor activities

Ensure appropriate access to 17P, a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone, by identifying high-risk women, reducing barriers to treatment receipt and completion, coordinating care, etc.

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

Incorporate technology into classroom instruction via computer-assisted instruction programs, computer-managed learning programs, use of interactive white boards, etc.

Support school-, community-, and clinic-based teen pregnancy prevention programs such as comprehensive sex education, HIV/STI prevention and youth development efforts, service learning, etc.

Deliver consultative, diagnostic, and treatment services remotely, especially for patients who live in areas with limited access to care or who experience transportation or mobility barriers; sometimes called telehealth

Provide mental health care services (e.g., psychotherapy or counseling) via telephone or videoconference

Provide reminders, education, or self-management assistance for health conditions, especially chronic diseases, via text message

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

Shift the way health care organizations approach trauma by adopting universal trauma precautions and providing trauma-specific care

Adopt a multi-tiered approach within schools to address the needs of trauma-exposed youth, including school-wide changes, screenings, and individual intensive support

Provide all students with the information and skills to prevent alcohol use; programs can be delivered via a specific curriculum or as a component of classroom behavior management

Deliver a curriculum-based program that helps all students learn to recognize warning signs of suicide in themselves and others in a school setting

Support food-producing and income-earning activities in urban environments (e.g., edible landscapes, front yard or rooftop gardens, window farming, hydroponics, livestock, etc.)

Create financial incentives or remove financial disincentives to affect consumer choices and incentivize provision of cost efficient health care services

Use the purchasing power of employers and groups of insured individuals to create incentives and disincentives for health care providers to deliver high quality, high value care

Implement anti-idling policies and awareness campaigns to reduce engine idling for passenger vehicles, school buses, and/or equipment and truck fleets

Increase voter turnout through get-out-the-vote campaigns and initiatives to make voting more convenient such as allowing early in-person voting, vote-by-mail, or expanding polling locations and hours

Arrange active transportation with a fixed route, designated stops, and pick up times when children can walk to school with adult chaperones

Make water readily available in various settings via regular placement of drinking fountains, water coolers, bottled water in vending machines, etc.

Support breastfeeding via private, well-equipped lactation spaces in workplaces, along with breastfeeding breaks, flexible schedules, professional lactation support, etc.

Use educational, environmental, and behavioral strategies to improve food choices and physical activity opportunities in worksite settings, also called workplace health programs

Provide participating high school students with professional opportunities that combine academic and on-the-job training or mentorship

Teach students attitudes, skills, knowledge, and behavior needed to participate in and contribute to a democracy