Strategies

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

118 Strategies
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Healthy vending machine options

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

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

High school equivalency credentials

Offer programs to help individuals without a high school diploma or its equivalent achieve a high school equivalency credential
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Education
  • Income, employment and wealth

Homework or extra credit for PE class

Assign homework or extra credit activities for physical education (PE) or health classes that require students to be physically active outside of school
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

Housing reparations

Apologize for discriminatory housing policies; increase subsidies, financing, and paths to homeownership for people of color; and invest in systematically disadvantaged neighborhoods
Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth
  • Housing and transportation
  • Civic and community resources

Societal Rules

  • Laws and policies
  • Worldviews, culture and norms

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs)

Support subsidized asset accumulation programs in which deposits by participants with low and moderate incomes are matched by program sponsors; withdrawals must be used for qualified expenses to retain matching funds
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth

Societal Rules

  • Budgets

Individually-adapted physical activity programs

Teach behavioral skills that can help individuals incorporate physical activity into their daily routines
Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

Job-sharing programs

Offer flexible working arrangements, allowing the duties of a single full-time position to be covered by two part-time employees
Evidence Rating:
Insufficient Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth

Societal Rules

  • Institutional practices

Labor unions

Organize workers to bargain collectively for improved wages, benefits, and working conditions
Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth
  • Civic and community resources

Societal Rules

  • Institutional practices
  • Governance
  • Worldviews, culture and norms

Land return for tribal restitution

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

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth
  • Civic and community resources

Societal Rules

  • Laws and policies

Living wage laws

Establish locally mandated wages that are higher than state or federal minimum wage levels
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Income, employment and wealth

Societal Rules

  • Laws and policies