Cultivating a Healthier Policy Landscape: The Building Healthy Communities Initiative.

Objective: To identify effective methods for local public health departments to secure policy and systems changes that will achieve health equity and improve health outcomes across diverse populations.

Methods: We reviewed 220 documents from a philanthropic initiative that funded collaborative efforts to improve conditions for health and equity in 14 California communities from 2010 to 2020. We examined the role of factors associated with movement-building approaches-such as organizing, base-building, investing in organizational capacity, and forming alliances-in securing policy and systems changes that foster more equitable community conditions.

A System of Prevention: Applying a Systems Approach to Public Health.

Among public health and health care practitioners, there is growing understanding that individuals make choices about their health not in a vacuum but based on the social, physical, and economic environments surrounding them and the resources available to them. Furthermore, we know that we, as a society, have designed these environments and resource allocation processes and that those in turn can produce better or worse health outcomes. In recognition of this, some practitioners are turning toward systems thinking as a way of understanding the many sectors and factors that influence health, and as a strategy for influencing broad and sustained health interventions.

Emerging issues in improving food and physical activity environments: strategies for addressing land use, transportation, and safety in 3 California-wide initiatives.

Mounting research has suggested linkages between neighborhood safety, community design, and transportation patterns and eating and activity behaviors and health outcomes. On the basis of a review of evaluation findings from 3 multisite healthy eating and activity initiatives in California, we provide an overview of 3 community process strategies-engaging local advocates, linking safety to health, and collaborating with local government officials-that may be associated with the successful development and implementation of long-term community-improvement efforts and should be explored further.