What Works to Promote Health? Turn to the Community Guide

 

Do you know what works to improve health and promote safety in your community? Want to find out? Turn to The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) to learn about programs that work to improve health and prevent disease where you live, work, learn, and play.

The Community Guide is a free and valuable resource that can be used to help community groups make sound decisions about which programs and policies they should support based on the fact that they have been proven to be effective.

What makes the Community Guide so credible is that recommendations about the effectiveness of programs and policies are made by The Task Force on Community Preventive Services (Task Force)—an independent, nonfederal, rotating volunteer group of public health and prevention experts appointed by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Established in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Task Force bases its findings and recommendations on systematic reviews of the scientific literature conducted by the Community Guide. The Task Force also oversees the work of the Community Guide.

Answering Your Questions

The Community Guide answers questions critical to almost everyone interested in community health and well-being:

• What interventions have and have not worked?
• In which populations and settings has the intervention worked or not?
• What might the intervention cost? What should I expect for my investment?
• Does the intervention lead to any other benefits or any harms?
• What interventions need more research before we know if they work or not?

And that's not all.

Improving the Health and Safety of You and Your Community

The Community Guide makes recommendations that can directly affect your health and safety. More than 200 interventions have been reviewed and the Task Force has issued findings and recommendations about their use.

For example, current laws requiring .08% blood alcohol levels (BAC) for drivers are the result of a Congressional decision that considered Community Guide recommendations for lower BAC laws. Since all 50 states later passed and enacted these laws, experts estimate 400-600 fewer alcohol-related deaths occur on our roadways each year.

Helping You Make Choices

The Community Guide covers 18 public health topics with interventions designed to:

• Prevent excessive alcohol use
• Prevent and control diabetes
• Increase physical activity
• Reduce injuries from motor vehicle crashes
• Reduce vaccine preventable diseases
• Prevent and reduce tobacco use
• Promote health in the workplace

For each topic, you can find published articles that include Task Force findings and recommendations, the systematic reviews on which the recommendations were based, and brief summaries of each intervention reviewed.

Ways You Can Use the Community Guide

The Community Guide is free, easy to use, and has many uses. You can use the Community Guide for:

• Policies. Legislation, organizational policies…
• Programs or Services. Planning, preventive services, employee health and wellness...
• Funding. Grant development, funding proposals…
• Research. Identifying gaps, setting priorities, study quality…
• Education. Course development, training…
• General Use. Identify what works, use resources wisely, build community support…

Visit the Community Guide Web site

Learn more about the Community Guide, the Task Force, and what works to promote health.
Visit www.thecommunityguide.org to learn about the Community Guide team, subscribe to email updates , and read Community Guide News & Announcements.

Know someone interested in improving health in their community?
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