179846 Crosscutting strategies to engage non-traditional partners in producing healthy community environments

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Virginia Lee, MPH, CHES , Prevention Institute, Oakland, CA
Leslie Mikkelsen, MPH, RD , Prevention Institute, Oakland, CA
Janani Srikantharajah, BA , Prevention Institute, Oakland, CA
Health-promoting food and activity environments are essential elements of a healthy community. In order to effectively improve environments where people live, work, play, and learn, efforts must be strategic and coordinated. Prevention Institute will articulate a broad definition of the environment that includes social and cultural elements, in addition to the physical elements that are typically associated with environments. The presentation will focus on the intersections between eating and activity behaviors and the built environment and how public policy and institutional practice change levers can support health-producing behaviors.

Through work with the Strategic Alliance, national and state Steps to a HealthierUS coalitions, the Healthy Places Coalition, and the Healthy Eating/Active Living Convergence Partnership, the Institute has identified key elements of a successful strategy to impact the built environment: identifying a comprehensive agenda with strategic policies and engaging a multidisciplinary partnership of key sectors. An effective agenda requires a broad range of cross-cutting strategies that can engage diverse constituencies. Collaborations must strategically engage non-traditional partners (beyond public health) that may not explicitly focus on health, but make decisions every day that impact the public's health. Prevention Institute will highlight interdisciplinary strategies and policies to achieve healthy food and activity environments and delineate how sectors and disciplines can add unique value to these efforts.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understand the value of public policy and institutional practice change in changing environments and producing healthy behaviors. 2. Identify non-traditional sectors (outside health) that make decisions daily that impact health and must be engaged in collaboration to reform the built environment. 3. Identify innovative, crosscutting strategies to begin building synergy between fields to maximize the effectiveness of efforts.

Keywords: Environment, Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Prevention Institute has been working for the past 10 years on identifying environmental change strategies in healthy eating and active living that have the potential to engage a diverse audience. We have presented this material in a number of settings and recieved positive feedback.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.