Community Level Action for Population-wide Impact: An Overview of Community Efforts to Increase Healthy Eating and Active Living Opportunities

Beginning in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched three nationally funded, locally implemented programs intended to increase healthy eating and physical activity population-wide.  Community Transformation Grants (CTG), Partnerships to Improve Community Health (PICH), and Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) 2014 differ slightly by type of program model but similarly focus on developing policy, system, and environmental improvements at the community level.   

This presentation identifies strategies and lessons learned from several communities that shared   the common goal to plan, implement, and evaluate efforts meant to decrease the burden of chronic disease through increased access to healthy foods and physical activity opportunities.  An analysis of progress reports and internal documents will identify strategies, lessons learned, and successes from program communities.  These findings may serve to improve health outcomes in other areas.  This presentation will also identify characteristics and commonalities of communities that implement population-wide strategies. 

There is no single strategy that can improve community health.  However, including health in policies that create or support systems and environments broadens public health’s reach within communities. This, in turn, may decrease long-term chronic disease health outcomes and improve population health overall.  Our analysis outlines the importance of supporting communities to create population-wide strategies that increase access to healthy food options and physical activity opportunities.