Kaiser Permanente's Healthy Eating, Active Living obesity prevention initiative

Kaiser Permanente's (KP) obesity prevention initiative focused on Health Eating, Active Living (HEAL) takes a comprehensive, multi-faceted, public health approach to obesity prevention. With this approach, KP leverages the organization's expertise as a delivery system as well as its community partnerships and philanthropic resources as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to community benefit. The focus on HEAL elevates the importance of the influences of environmental factors in which individuals live, work, and play in recognition that clinical interventions alone will not be sufficient to address the obesity epidemic. Additionally, because obesity is a significant public health problem, progress in this area can have a major impact on a wide range of health conditions that are linked to lifestyles choices.

KP's HEAL initiative integrates these components: 1) clinical interventions, such as collection of BMI as a vital sign, 2) community health initiatives, which are community partnerships focused on environmental and policy changes, 3) organizational practice changes to increase access to healthy foods in and around KP facilities, 4) public policy advocacy, including funding public health advocacy organizations, 5) a media campaign to communicate the organization's philosophy of prevention and health promotion, and 6) evaluation of HEAL efforts to inform program improvement and to document impact.

While KP is unique in many ways, there are elements of this approach to obesity prevention that can be generalized to other healthcare organization, especially community-based delivery systems and health plans that are driven by a social mission to address critical community health issues.