Strategies

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

Restrict child-focused advertising for unhealthy foods and beverages via bans on unhealthy food and drink ads during children’s TV programs, product placement in children’s movies, etc.

Establish and support land that is gardened or cultivated by community members via community land trusts, gardening education, zoning regulation changes, or service provision (e.g., water or waste disposal)

Build, strengthen, and maintain social networks that provide supportive relationships for behavior change through walking groups or other community-based interventions

Use aerobic, natural decomposition to divert food and yard waste from landfills and create a nutrient-rich soil amendment product on an individual or large scale

Support the federal-state partnership that pays participating landowners an annual rental rate for removing environmentally sensitive land from production and introducing conservation practices on the land.

Offer debt advice from trained providers to tenants with unpaid, overdue rent to help repay debt and increase financial literacy

Replace internal combustion engine vehicles with all-electric vehicles through financial incentives, regulations, and multi-component initiatives

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

Increase family members’ support for physical activity, often via educational sessions on health, goal-setting, problem-solving, or family behavioral management

Incorporate locally grown foods into school meals and snacks, often with visits from food producers, cooking classes, nutrition and waste reduction efforts, and school gardens

Support multiple vendor markets where producers sell goods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy items, and prepared foods directly to consumers

Provide education on basic budgeting, bank use, credit management, bankruptcy, credit building and counseling, homeownership, retirement, divorce, etc.

Offer samples of fresh fruits and vegetables in cafeterias, nutrition classes, school gardens, or workplace well-being meetings, often as part of a multi-faceted nutrition intervention

Increase green space through new parks or open spaces, renovation or enhancement of under-used recreation areas, rehabilitation of vacant lots, brownfields, etc.

Combine hunger relief efforts with nutrition information and healthy eating opportunities, often with on-site cooking demonstrations, recipe tastings, produce display stands, etc.

Modify the school lunch food environment or school lunch schedules by increasing the convenience of healthy foods, providing healthy options, or ensuring students have enough time to eat

Inform parents and caregivers about lead exposure pathways from contaminated dust, soil, water, and air as well as the irreversible health consequences of lead exposure

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

Support a four-tiered approach to outdoor pest control that minimizes potential hazards to people, property, and the environment

Use broad media-based efforts to educate large groups of current and potential tobacco users about the dangers of tobacco use

Support fresh food carts or vehicles that travel to neighborhoods on a set schedule to sell fresh fruits and vegetables

Attract new grocery stores that sell a variety of fresh foods, baked goods, packaged, and frozen items to underserved areas via financing initiatives, tax incentives, or zoning regulation

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

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

Promote walking and biking to school through education, incentives, and environmental changes; often called SRTS

Support programs to provide students with a nutritious breakfast in the cafeteria, from grab and go carts in hallways, or in classrooms

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

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

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

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