Key points
- More than half of all Americans live with at least one chronic disease.
- Chronic diseases are leading causes of death and disability. They also increase healthcare costs and lower worker productivity.
- States and communities can take action to reduce the risk of chronic disease for people they serve.
Priority strategies
CDC's Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity has these priority strategies for state and local organizations. These strategies can help reduce the risk of chronic disease. Follow the links for background information, key definitions, potential activities, key resources, and examples of what others are doing.
Make physical activity safe and accessible for all
Implement policies and activities to connect pedestrian, bicycle, or transit transportation networks to everyday destinations.
Make healthy food choices easier everywhere
Promote food service and nutrition guidelines and associated healthy food procurement in facilities, programs, or organizations where food is sold, served, and distributed.
Coordinate the uptake and expansion of existing voucher incentive and produce prescription programs.
Make breastfeeding easier to start and continue
Implement policies and activities that achieve continuity of care for those who breastfeed.
Strengthen obesity prevention standards for early care and education (ECE) settings
Implement policies and practices that improve nutrition, physical activity, and breastfeeding in ECE settings.
Increase number of and access to family healthy weight programs
Establish policies and activities to implement, spread, and sustain Family Healthy Weight Programs.
Cross-cutting areas
Communication tips to support program efforts.
Evaluation framework for making evaluations useful, feasible, ethical, accurate, and culturally responsive.
Health equity tools to help remove barriers to health.