Strategies

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

148 Strategies
Clear all

Community kitchens for nutrition education

Use existing kitchen spaces for community members to share knowledge, resources, and labor to prepare, cook, and consume food, often with nutrition education provided for participants experiencing food insecurity
Evidence Rating:
Insufficient Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise
  • Civic and community resources

Community policing

Implement a policing philosophy based on community partnership, organizational transformation, and problem-solving techniques to proactively address public safety issues: also called community-oriented policing
Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported

Community Conditions

  • Safety and social support

Societal Rules

  • Institutional practices

Community supported agriculture (CSA)

Establish partnerships between farmers and consumers in which consumers purchase a share of a farm’s products in advance
Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise
  • Climate
  • Civic and community resources

Community weight loss challenges

Support temporary programs that work to energize participants to lose weight via prizes, often combined with education, weight status and food intake tracking, regular check-ins, and group support
Evidence Rating:
Expert Opinion

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

Community-based social support for physical activity

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

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

Community-wide physical activity campaigns

Engage a variety of partners in a highly visible, multi-component effort to increase physical activity, often with efforts to address cardiovascular disease risk factors
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise

Competitive pricing for healthy foods

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
Evidence Rating:
Scientifically Supported

Community Conditions

  • Diet and exercise
  • Climate

Societal Rules

  • Institutional practices

Complete Streets & streetscape design initiatives

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

Community Conditions

  • Housing and transportation
  • Diet and exercise
  • Civic and community resources
  • Climate

Societal Rules

  • Institutional practices

Court mandated programs for perpetrators of intimate partner violence

Expand court-referred intimate partner violence offenders’ understanding of abuse, teach alternative reactions, and work to change gender role attitudes; also called batterer intervention programs (BIPs)
Evidence Rating:
Mixed Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Safety and social support

Societal Rules

  • Laws and policies

Crisis lines

Provide free and confidential counseling and service referrals via telephone-based conversation, web-based chat, or text message to individuals in crisis, particularly those with severe mental health concerns
Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence

Community Conditions

  • Safety and social support