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As a companion to the online course titled Partnering4Health: Approaches to Sustaining Healthy Communities, SOPHE has developed a toolkit to provide guidance and resources for those who seek to carry out the sustainability activities described in the course. Whereas the online course provides guidance about the steps that can be taken to ensure sustainability, the toolkit provides the tools and resources that can help public health professionals and educators, community-based organizations, and community members who are passionate about improving the health of their communities to take those steps toward sustaining healthy communities.

In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Planning and Community Health Center is creating a set of guidelines to incorporate health into the Conceptual Review process for development projects.

A digital hub for the nation’s leading information and ideas about outstanding TOD projects

Action Learning Collaboratives (ALCs), whereby teamsapply quality improvement (QI) tools and methods,have successfully improved patient care delivery andoutcomes. We adapted and tested the ALC model as acommunity-based obesity prevention interventionfocused on physical activity and healthy eating.Method. The intervention used QI tools (e.g., progressmonitoring) and team-based activities and was implementedin three communities through nine monthlymeetings. To assess process and outcomes, we used alongitudinal repeated-measures and mixed-methodstriangulation approach with a quasi-experimentaldesign including objective measures at three timepoints. Results. Most of the 97 participants were female(85.4%), White (93.8%), and non-Hispanic/Latino(95.9%). Average age was 52 years; 28.0% had annualhousehold income of $20,000 or less; and mean bodymass index was 35. Through mixed-effects models, wefound some physical activity outcomes improved.Other outcomes did not significantly change. Althoughparticipants favorably viewed the QI tools, componentsof the QI process such as sharing goals and data onprogress in teams and during meetings were limited.Participants’ requests for more education or activitiesaround physical activity and healthy eating, ratherthan progress monitoring and data sharing required forQI activities, challenged ALC model implementation.Conclusions. An ALC model for community-based obesityprevention may be more effective when applied topreexisting teams in community-based organizations.

The following is a snapshot of the U.S. landscape of e-cigarette regulation as of May 22, 2015. The information below was based on a 50-state (plus Washington, D.C.) survey of current state statutes pertaining to e-cigarette regulations in the following areas definition of “tobacco product,” taxation, product packaging, youth access/other retail restrictions, and smoke-free air legislation.