Opportunities and Challenges

Several educational and community-based initiatives that demonstrate a commitment to increasing life quality and eliminating health disparities have been under way since the beginning of the decade. These include broad efforts, as well as more specific initiatives aimed at schools and workplaces.

The HHS Steps to a HealthierUS initiative, a component of the HealthierUS plan, uses the strategies and methodologies of the Educational and Community-Based Programs focus area to help Americans live longer and healthier lives. States and communities participating in the Steps initiative work to address diabetes, obesity, and asthma, as well as risk factors like poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and tobacco use.⁸

Colleges and universities provide a setting for educational and community-based programs. One resource designed to facilitate disease prevention and health promotion planning in colleges and universities is Healthy Campus 2010: Making It Happen.⁹ The manual helps local health workers assess campus and community health needs in their area.⁹

A resource designed to increase disease prevention and health promotion activities in the workplace is Healthy Workforce 2010: An Essential Health Promotion Sourcebook for Employers, Large and Small.¹⁰ This publication educates employers on how health promotion helps businesses function more effectively and efficiently. In addition, it provides strategies for developing and maintaining worksite health promotion programs and activities.¹⁰

In addition, community health efforts like the CDC-based initiative REACH 2010 (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) provide valuable opportunities for communities to learn from each other. A report in a special issue of Ethnicity and Disease was published in the summer of 2004 to describe REACH 2010's early successes.¹¹

During the past decade, interest has increased in policy and environmental interventions as effective tools for health promotion and disease prevention. The Institute of Medicine's The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century¹² identifies the need to enhance practitioners' health promotion and education skills.

To provide guidance for designing and implementing policy and environmental change interventions that affect large segments of the population, the Directors of Health Promotion and Education (DHPE), with support from HHS through CDC, has developed Policy and Environmental Change, New Directions for Public Health.¹³ Another report from DHPE,State Health Promotion Capacity,¹⁴ describes the perceived health promotion capacities of those carrying out programs in State health agencies, priority needs for professional development, and actions that might be undertaken to strengthen health promotion activities and programs conducted by State and local public health agencies.

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