Obesity Prevention in the U.S.

States and communities are responding to the obesity epidemic in the United States by working to create environments that support healthy eating and active living and by giving public health practitioners and policy makers an opportunity to learn from community-based efforts to prevent obesity. However, the absence of measurements to assess policy and environmental changes at the community level has impeded efforts to assess the implementation of these types of population-level initiatives for preventing obesity. To address this issue, the CDC initiated the Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention Project. This new book describes the recommended strategies, summarizes available evidence regarding their effectiveness and presents a suggested measurement for each strategy that communities can use to assess implementation and track progress over time.