Strategies

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

13 Strategies
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Bicycle infrastructure for enhanced cycling safety

Accommodate or provide dedicated infrastructure for cyclists via bicycle paths, lanes, cycle tracks or protected lanes, etc.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit
  • Community Safety

Community land trusts

Purchase the land a home is on to lease to homeowners with low and middle incomes and require homeowners to sell the home back to the trust or to another resident with low income upon moving

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit

Debt advice for tenants with unpaid rent

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

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Income
  • Housing and Transit

Health literacy interventions

Increase patients’ health-related knowledge via efforts to simplify health education materials, improve patient-provider communication, and increase overall literacy

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Access to Care
  • Quality of Care

Household lead control education interventions

Inform parents about lead exposure pathways and cleaning and hygiene techniques and undertake minor repairs or specialized cleaning

Evidence Rating:
Evidence of Ineffectiveness
  • Housing and Transit

Land banking

Acquire, hold, manage, and develop properties such as vacant lots, abandoned buildings, or foreclosures, and transition them to productive uses, often affordable housing developments

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Housing and Transit
  • Diet and Exercise

Medical-legal partnerships

Integrate legal services into health care settings to address legal issues that affect health (e.g., housing, food, utilities); services provided by private practice lawyers, law students, etc.

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Quality of Care

Multi-component groundwater management programs

Protect underground water resources via regular groundwater monitoring, education about risks to groundwater, water quotas and taxes, and other efforts

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Air and Water Quality

Price transparency initiatives for patients

Make pricing for hospital procedures and other health care services publicly available, often via websites, online databases, report cards, or similar tools

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Quality of Care

Public reporting of health care quality performance

Make clinician, hospital, clinic, long-term care facility, and insurance plan performance on health care quality measures publicly available via report cards, reporting websites, or similar tools

Evidence Rating:
Some Evidence
  • Quality of Care