Strengthening Our Collaborative Approaches for Advancing Equity and Justice.

The Principles for Collaborating for Equity and Justice are explicit about addressing social and economic injustice, structural racism, and community organizing to facilitate resident power and ownership. They also focus on structural change, an acknowledgment of complexity, and the need to thoughtfully build on decades of practice and scholarship on collaborating for community change. This special theme issue of includes 10 articles that highlight these principles and provide insight into the complexities, challenges, and rewards of collaborating in ways that are intentional about advancing health equity through inclusive processes and shared goals to address social determinants of health.

Building a National Culture of Health: Background, Action Framework, Measures, and Next Steps.

Because health is a function of more than medical care, solutions to U.S. health problems must encompass more than reforms to health care systems.

Creating Healthier, More Equitable Communities By Improving Governance And Policy.

How can healthier, more equitable communities be created? This is a key question for public health. Even though progress has been made in understanding the impact of social, physical, and policy factors on population health, there is much room for improvement. With this in mind, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation made creating healthier, more equitable communities the third of four Action Areas in its Culture of Health Action Framework.

Cross-Sector Collaborations And Partnerships: Essential Ingredients To Help Shape Health And Well-Being.

Cross-sector collaborations and partnerships are an essential component of the strategy to improve health and well-being in the United States. While their importance is unquestioned, their impact on population health has not yet been fully observed. Cross-sector collaboration also is the second Action Area of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's four-part Action Framework to build a Culture of Health in the United States.

Active living research: creating and using evidence to support childhood obesity prevention.

The second phase of Active Living Research (ALR-2, 2007-2012) focused on advancing the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)'s goal of reversing the childhood obesity epidemic. The mission was to stimulate and support research to identify environmental factors and policies that influence physical activity for children and families to inform effective childhood obesity prevention strategies, with an emphasis on the lower-income and racial/ethnic communities with highest childhood obesity prevalence. The present report describes ALR activities undertaken to accomplish three goals.

Childhood obesity policy research and practice: evidence for policy and environmental strategies.

Investigators developed a review system to evaluate the growing literature on policy and environmental strategies to prevent childhood obesity. More than 2000 documents published between January 2000 and May 2009 in the scientific and grey literature were identified (2008-2009) and systematically analyzed (2009-2012). These focused on policy or environmental strategies to reduce obesity/overweight, increase physical activity, and/or improve nutrition/diet among youth (aged 3-18 years).

The caloric calculator: average caloric impact of childhood obesity interventions.

Background: The childhood obesity epidemic reflects the daily accumulation of an "energy gap"-excess calories consumed over calories expended. Population-level interventions to reverse the epidemic can be assessed by the degree to which they increase energy expenditure and/or reduce caloric intake. However, no common metric exists for such comparative assessment.

Stand-alone mass media campaigns to increase physical activity: a Community Guide updated review.

Context: The goal of the systematic review described in this summary was to determine the effectiveness of stand-alone mass media campaigns to increase physical activity at the population level. This systematic review is an update of a Community Guide systematic review and Community Preventive Services Task Force recommendation completed in 2001.

Evidence Acquisition: Updated searches for literature published from 1980 to 2008 were conducted in 11 databases.

Reaching the healthy people goals for reducing childhood obesity: closing the energy gap.

Background: The federal government has set measurable goals for reducing childhood obesity to 5% by 2010 (Healthy People 2010), and 10% lower than 2005-2008 levels by 2020 (Healthy People 2020). However, population-level estimates of the changes in daily energy balance needed to reach these goals are lacking.

Purpose: To estimate needed per capita reductions in youths' daily "energy gap" (calories consumed over calories expended) to achieve Healthy People goals by 2020.

Accelerating evidence reviews and broadening evidence standards to identify effective, promising, and emerging policy and environmental strategies for prevention of childhood obesity.

The childhood obesity epidemic has stimulated the emergence of many policy and environmental strategies to increase healthy eating and active living, with relatively few research recommendations identifying the most effective and generalizable strategies. Yet, local, state, and national decision makers have an urgent need to take action, particularly with respect to lower-income and racial and ethnic populations at greatest risk. With the surge of promising and emerging policy and environmental strategies, this review provides a framework, criteria, and process modeled from existing expert classification systems to assess the strength of evidence for these strategies.

Science, prudence, and politics: the case of smoke-free indoor spaces.

Purpose: We examine the process of how epidemiologic evidence regarding the harms of secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure has been translated into policy and distill lessons that could be applied to other public health areas.

Methods: We detail the history of the growth of evidence and the development of prudent policies in this area and the parallel, organized efforts led by the tobacco industry to oppose them. We also describe how opposition to these policies helped shape the emerging research agenda.

Exploring scenarios to dramatically reduce smoking prevalence: a simulation model of the three-part cessation process.

Objectives: We used a simulation model to analyze whether the Healthy People 2010 goal of reducing smoking prevalence from the current 19.8% rate to 12% by 2010 could be accomplished by increasing quit attempts, increasing the use of treatments, or increasing the effectiveness of treatment.

Methods: We expanded on previous versions of the tobacco control simulation model SimSmoke to assess the effects of an increase in quit attempts, treatment use, and treatment effectiveness to reduce smoking prevalence.

Reaching Healthy People 2010 by 2013: A SimSmoke simulation.

Background: Healthy People (HP2010) set as a goal to reduce adult smoking prevalence to 12% by 2010.

Purpose: This paper uses simulation modeling to examine the effects of three tobacco control policies and cessation treatment policies-alone and in conjunction-on population smoking prevalence.

Methods: Building on previous versions of the SimSmoke model, the effects of a defined set of policies on quit attempts, treatment use, and treatment effectiveness are estimated as potential levers to reduce smoking prevalence.

Modeling the impact of smoking-cessation treatment policies on quit rates.

Background: Smoking-cessation treatment policies could yield substantial increases in adult quit rates in the U.S.

Purpose: The goals of this paper are to model the effects of individual cessation treatment policies on population quit rates, and to illustrate the potential benefits of combining policies to leverage their synergistic effects.

Boosting population quits through evidence-based cessation treatment and policy.

Only large increases in adult cessation will rapidly reduce population smoking prevalence. Evidence-based smoking-cessation treatments and treatment policies exist but are underutilized. More needs to be done to coordinate the widespread, efficient dissemination and implementation of effective treatments and policies.

Creating physical activity-promoting community environments: time for a breakthrough.

Increasing the amount of physical activity Americans get to recommended levels will require changes in community environments so that people can be more active as part of everyday life. Recent and pending federal legislation can provide the investments and other support necessary to make. These changes also positively address other major challenges we face as a nation, including climate change and the ailing economy.