Healthy Lifestyle Initiative

Making the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice

Design for success

• Identify the Branches of Local Government to be Targeted by a Campaign

In developing policy goals, it is important to consider how an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the three branches of local government can inform strategy. The legislative and executive branches of government are the two branches most frequently targeted by policy practitioners. Prevention practitioners can utilize their understanding of government operation to determine which branch of government they need to target in order to obtain desired local policy changes.

• Analyze and Understand the Processes of Local Power Structures

The specific processes and players of local-level policy-making vary by location. Certain key elements distinguish local policy-making from similar efforts at the state and federal level. For example, the exact relationship

between the legislative and executive branches of government varies by locality depending upon the structure of the city or county government.

Practitioners must identify which institutions and key-players are responsible for making the decisions in the targeted policy area, and then learn how these

institutions determinate policy.

• Plan to Evaluate Policy Impact and Disseminate Results

An impact evaluation assesses changes in the well-being of individuals that can be attributed to a particular program or policy. Information generated by

impact evaluations informs decisions on whether to expand, modify, or eliminate a particular policy or program and can help other localities prioritize public actions. In addition, the results of impact evaluations can provide a

powerful argument for expanding a particular policy, especially where it helps quantify the savings resulting from the policy in relationship to the cost of

implementation. This information is critical to the field of primary prevention, where very little data exists on the relationship between environment-focused

policies on prevention and improved health outcomes.