Promising Strategies for Healthy Communities: An integrative approach for community organizations

The Missouri Foundation for Health's (MFH) ‘Building Community Interventions on Promising Strategies' program provides support to community-based organizations implementing obesity prevention efforts targeted to low-income, high risk communities in Missouri. The program model requires broad regional strategies and community-based activities rooted in best practices for comprehensive obesity prevention efforts. A multi-phase approach has been implemented since 2005 including grantmaking, policy development, capacity building, evaluation, and communication activities. The Promising Strategies effort funds a variety of organizations, city governments, and coalitions to implement effective and replicable evidence-based prevention methods that promote healthy communities by changing the environment and social norms to reduce obesity. The community projects align with the socio-ecological framework, which recognizes multiple spheres of influence impact individual behaviors. Applicants use a pre-selected menu of evidence-based, promising and/or innovative strategies to develop coordinated environmental and policy change interventions to prevent obesity. When combined these efforts help make the healthy choice the easy choice at a community level and advance efforts to implement nationally recognized best practices at the statewide level. Active collaborations and multi-sectoral partnerships are key components of the Promising Strategies program. These relationships leverage resources and create strong, community-wide projects that extend beyond a single organization with the potential for long term sustainability. This is further augmented by technical assistance focused on increasing organizational capacity to conduct prevention programming, advocate for local policy changes and be an active participant in a comprehensive obesity prevention effort.