National Prevention Strategy: Supporting Healthy Eating & Healthy Community Environments

The National Prevention Council, established through the Affordable Care Act, provides leadership to engage the federal government a diverse array of stakeholders around policies and programs to create healthy communities. In June 2011, the Council released the National Prevention Strategy (NPS) with a goal of improving the number of Americans who are healthy at every stage of life through the implementation of evidence-based recommendations across four Strategic Directions and seven priorities. This presentation will outline elements of the NPS related to the food environment and healthy communities, and highlight example activities from the National Prevention Council. The NPS recognizes that a healthy community environment can help make healthy choices easy and affordable. The food environment spans several areas of the NPS, but it is explicitly addressed through recommendations related to Healthy and Safe Community Environments, Empowered People, and Healthy Eating. The NPS provides recommendations and actions for federal government and nonfederal partners that can help address disparities in the built environment, including increasing access to healthy, affordable food. Examples of federal programs that have supported this work include the FoodCorps, which supports school food systems in communities of need, and the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which was designed to encourage the construction of healthy food retail outlets and other projects that make healthy food available in high poverty communities. By providing a framework for partners to work together across sectors to create healthier communities, the National Prevention Strategy can improve health at every stage of life.