Investments in Communities:
CDC’s Role in Activating Local Change

CDC’s Healthy Communities Program helps funded communities prevent chronic diseases by building community capacity—commitment, resources, and skills—to develop and implement policy, systems, and environmental change strategies that will

• Reduce health risk factors, especially tobacco use and exposure, insufficient physical activity, and poor nutrition.
• Support attaining health equity.

Confronting the national epidemic of chronic diseases requires mobilizing community resources and changing the places, organizations, and systems that touch people’s lives every day, including schools, work sites, and community and health care settings. For example, communities need healthy and affordable food options in local grocery stores and restaurants, safe places where people can be physically active, effective and accessible preventive health care, and transportation strategies that support walking and biking. Key decisions related to these and other policy, systems, and environmental changes rest in the hands of local decision makers, who may need to be educated on the importance and effectiveness of changes that promote and support good community health.

CDC’s Healthy Communities Program provides communities with funding, tools, strategies, and training for creating policy, systems, and environmental changes to improve people’s health. Working with key partners, CDC activates these changes in an ever-widening network of communities that are ready to take action.

Since 2003, more than 240 communities have been selected to participate in CDC’s Healthy Communities Program, resulting in significant health-related improvements at the local level. During the next 3 years, about 180 additional communities will receive funding and technical support to serve as models for how to improve the health of communities. Learn more about the Healthy Communities Program’s

• Strategic Alliance for Health (SAH) communities
• ACHIEVE communities
• Pioneering Healthier Communities (PHC)
• REACH U.S. communities
• Steps communities
  
  

In addition, CDC's Healthy Communities Program assists in funding and training state and territorial health departments through a 5-year National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion cooperative agreement to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent chronic diseases. The health departments, in turn, provide technical assistance and training on developing and implementing policy, systems, and environmental changes to communities within their jurisdictions. Learn more about the U.S. State and Territorial Health Departments Collaborative for Chronic Diseases.