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Childhood Overweight and Obesity Prevention InitiativeSurgeon General's Pledge and ChecklistsCommunity ChecklistCommunities can hold events and create places that help kids stay active and encourage healthy eating habits.
Encourage healthy eating habits.
Help kids stay active.Talk with your schools about increasing physical activity. Schools can offer ways for all students to enjoy physical activities — recess, sports programs, walking to and from school, and through classroom lessons that have movement activities.
Build and keep up community recreation areas. The environment affects how much physical activity people do, which makes a difference in preventing overweight and obesity. Communities can be designed to encourage activities, like regular walking, biking, or playing of sports. Children’s physical activity levels go up when more recreational areas are near their homes. Look into nearby parks, sidewalks, playgrounds, skateboard parks, beaches, forests, trails, community gardens, and even shopping malls for increasing children’s physical activity.
Increase the “Walkability” of your community. Walkability is the idea of quantifying the safety and desirability of the walking routes. A walkability audit tool is designed to study places for walking, destinations, and areas along and near a walking route and suggest changes to make the route more attractive and useful to pedestrians. Using CDC’s Walkability Audit from this site can help you assess the safety or attractiveness of the walking routes at your worksite. The audit helps you map out the most commonly used walking routes, and helps you identify the most common safety hazards and things that can keep employees and students from walking at work or school.
Encourage healthy eating habits.Increase the number of places people can get healthy food they can afford. Make space for a farmers’ market. Ask people to buy foods and goods grown in or near the community. Work with your local food back to offer fresh fruits and vegetables, in addition to “healthier” pre-packaged foods, like low-fat or reduced salt products. Create a community vegetable garden, where families and groups can grow their own produces while increasing their activity level and creating time for togetherness. Work with grocery stores and businesses to limit displays and ads of junk food and candy aimed at children. Additionally, work with grocery stores and businesses to increase attractive, attention-getting displays of healthy food choices aimed at children. Work with your faith-based community to help promote healthy eating habits. Talk to your church or other place of worship about encouraging members of the congregation to bring healthier meal options such as more fruits and vegetables to functions, and eliminate junk food in children’s worship and fellowship programs.
Promote Healthy Choices.Build or grow a community group to help stop childhood overweight. People and groups working together can do more than working alone. We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children's Activity & Nutrition) is a program that offers everyone in the community a chance to help.
Identify opportunities and challenges for improving the community surroundings. Analyze barriers that hinder efforts to promote good nutrition and physical activity and identify opportunities to increase positive changes. A community “needs assessment” focused on childhood overweight and obesity prevention can help make people aware, build support, push for change, and bring new partners to help solve the problem.
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