How to Improve Nutrition and Physical Activity in Your Community

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From school gardens to active transportation, use the new Nutrition and Physical Activity Policy Resources Suite to improve nutrition and physical activity where you live.

The suite, developed by ChangeLab Solutions and the California Department of Public Health’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Branch (NPAB), is home to resources that support policy work on nutrition and physical activity-related public health efforts.

Local health departments, public health practitioners, and community leaders in any U.S. state can benefit from these resources.

Let’s take a closer look into how these resources can help communities and families.

Strategies to Support Safe and Active Transportation

In ChangeLab Solutions’ resource suite, public health and community leaders can find a guide on active transportation strategies.

Active transportation refers to human-powered ways of getting around, such as walking or rolling by foot, wheelchair, bicycle, scooter, or accessing public transit.

The guide includes how to start active transportation planning.

“Multipronged approaches that combine multiple policies, plans, and funding streams are most effective,” the guide states.

Planning and policy go hand in hand.

So the strategy guide also provides steps from development and adoption to implementation.

“Creating and sustaining a safe and accessible active transportation system requires combining and aligning many different plans and policies and collaborating with a range of partners,” according to the guide.

Understanding Healthy Procurement of Foods and Drinks

Another way local leaders can improve community health is ensuring governments serve and sell healthy food, according to ChangeLab Solutions’ resource suite.

Government entities procure food to provide meals in schools, public universities, childcare centers, public hospitals, jails, senior programs, and government facilities.

“Procuring healthy and nutritious foods can make healthy eating easier and improve the physical and mental health of employees, clients, patients, students, patrons, visitors, and nearby residents,” according to the suite’s healthy procurement guide.

The healthy procurement guide helps agencies and local leaders learn the impact of federal law on state- and local-level procurement, how procurement policy is implemented, contracting processes, what health procurement can look like, and more.

A second food-focused procurement guide helps leaders improve access to healthy foods, address sociodemographic issues in diet-related health outcomes, and achieve healthcare cost savings.

Adding School Gardens

School gardens can benefit students in many ways, from providing learning opportunities outside of the classroom and growing fresh produce for school cafeterias

ChangeLab Solutions’ resource suite has a primer on how to start a school garden.

“By reading this guide, you will gain a high-level understanding of school gardens, the laws and policies to consider before implementation, and the steps to establish a school garden in your community,” according to the primer.

Through the primer, agencies and communities can see examples of programs, local policies, planning, maintenance and garden sustainability and more.

“School gardens are linked to increased produce consumption, higher intake of dietary fiber and vitamins A and C, improved body mass index (BMI), and improved well-being in children,” according to the primer.

Improve Health in Your Community

How healthy is your community?

Find out by downloading a Salud America! Health Report Card for your town!

Enter your county name and get auto-generated local data with interactive maps and comparative gauges on several health indicators. This can help you visualize and explore local issues in education, housing, transportation, food, health, and more.

See how your county stacks up compared to the rest of your state and nation.

Then email the Report Card to local leaders to raise awareness, include the data in a presentation or grant proposal, or share it on social media to drive healthy changes in your community!

GET YOUR HEALTH REPORT CARD!