Moving from knowledge to action: Preventing chronic disease through policy, environment, and systems change

Policy, systems and environmental change provides a means of modifying social and physical environments to make healthy choices the easy choices. By changing policies, systems and/or environments, communities can help tackle chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

For example, recent federal initiatives have allotted significant federal funding for intensive community approaches to chronic disease prevention and control in selected communities (urban, rural, and tribal) with the goal to reduce risk factors and prevent/delay chronic disease and promote wellness in both children and adults.

These types of initiatives have a strong emphasis on policy and environmental change at both the state and local levels. Additionally, these initiatives use evidence-based strategies and programs, mobilize local resources, and strengthen the capacity of states and communities.

To move from knowledge to action, states and communities have found strategies such as MAPPS (Media, Access, Point of Decision, Price, Social Support) to be successful in practice.

This session will describe ways to measure policy, environment, and systems change in different state and local contexts. Examples will be drawn from settings such as medical/outpatient and community-based settings.