Engaging Health Providers in Advocacy: Changing the environment to support healthy behaviors

The Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) initiative is a 4-year childhood obesity prevention grant funded by The California Endowment to support environmental changes to improve opportunities for children to eat healthy and be active. HEAC focuses on five sectors: Schools, After-School programs, Neighborhood, Marketing and Advertising, and Health Care. Six HEAC sites are funded throughout California. This presentation will focus on the Health Care Sector of the Chula Vista site.

The goal of the Health Care Sector is to engage providers in advocating for environmental changes to support healthy behaviors. The Chula Vista HEAC Health Care Sector includes physicians, nurses, promotores (lay health educators), professional community health educators/promoters, community clinics, health plans, and hospitals. Providers participate in Sector efforts at varying levels, and take lead on different prevention strategies.

The author will share lessons learned thus far from the Health Care Sector's three years of experience in engaging a diversity of providers to collaborate effectively to support community-based obesity prevention efforts. Examples of provider-led projects and activities will be described, such as: the development of a localized ”tool-kit” and use of academic detailing to standardize office practices for child overweight screening, counseling, and referral to community-based prevention and treatment services; a prescription pad program created in partnership with the City of Chula Vista to refer patients to enroll recreational programs for free; advocating for the adoption and implementation of school wellness policies; advocating for local governments and institutions to adopt healthy vending policies.