Strategies

Establish a break from the school day, typically before lunch, that involves planned, inclusive, actively supervised games or activities; also called semi-structured, or structured recess

Offer group educational, social, creative, musical, or physical activities that promote social interactions, regular attendance, and community involvement among older adults

Enable law enforcement to immediately take the license of a driver who fails or refuses to take a chemical test for alcohol

Limit increases in the number and concentration of alcohol outlets by area or by population through licensing or zoning regulations

Increase the price of alcohol via taxes levied for beer, wine, and liquor purchases

Set legal limits for drivers’ blood alcohol concentrations (BACs)

Provide education, information, counseling, and support for breastfeeding to women throughout pre- and post-natal care

Implement checkpoints where law enforcement officers can stop drivers suspected of drinking and driving and assess their level of alcohol impairment

Deliver tobacco cessation advice and motivational messages via text or video message

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

Replace or retrofit diesel buses or other vehicles to operate with clean diesel technology

Assign higher costs to non-nutritious foods than nutritious foods via incentives, subsidies, or price discounts for healthy foods and beverages or disincentives or price increases for unhealthy choices

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

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

Encourage methods of soil cultivation that keep at least one-third of cultivated soil covered with the previous year’s crop residue (e.g., mulch till, ridge till, strip till, or no-till)

Hold alcohol retailers legally responsible for injuries or damage caused by providing alcohol to intoxicated or underage customers; also called commercial host liability laws

Use specialized courts to offer criminal offenders with drug dependency problems an alternative to adjudication or incarceration

Expand refundable earned income tax credits for working individuals and families with low to moderate incomes

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

Initiate or increase retailer compliance checks, shoulder tap operations, parking lot observation outside alcohol establishments for laws that prohibit alcohol sales to minors

Use specialized courts to work with parents involved in the child welfare system who may lose custody of their children due to substance abuse

Offer participants with low incomes matching funds to purchase healthy foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables; often called bonus dollars, market bucks, produce coupons, or nutrition incentives

Adopt policies that allow custodial parents who receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to collect all child support paid by the non-custodial parent; no portion is retained by the state

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

Increase healthy options in vending machines by reducing the price of healthy choices, increasing the number of healthy choices compared to unhealthy choices, etc.

Strengthen policies that mandate ignition interlock installation in vehicles to prevent operation by a driver with a high blood alcohol concentration

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

Use websites, computer programs, and other electronic means to provide information, strategies, or behavioral support to tobacco users who want to quit, sometimes with counseling or pharmacotherapy

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

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

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

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

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

Offer young children opportunities to eat healthy foods and engage in physical activity by providing fresh fruits and vegetables, incorporating physical activity into daily classroom routines, etc.

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

Incorporate classroom-based physical activities, such as classroom energizers, into academic lessons or as a break, usually for elementary students

Modify local environments to support physical activity, increase access to new or existing facilities for physical activity, or build new facilities

Place motivational signs on or near stairwells, elevators, and escalators that encourage individuals to use stairs

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

Repeal government control over retail sales of alcoholic beverages, allowing commercial retailing of those beverages

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

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.

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

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

Increase the price of sugar sweetened beverages (e.g., soda) by adding an excise or sales tax

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