ABSTRACT

In light of the rapidly increasing obesity rates among adults and children/youth in the United States over the past 30 years,1-5 and the failed attempts to curb this epidemic through individual-based approaches of behavior change,6 communities have sought to implement more broad-based policy and environmental supports to address the energy-balance behaviors of healthy eating, active living, and decreased sedentary behavior (e.g., greater access to full-service grocery stores, affordable healthy foods, and access to safe places for physical activity and play).7,8

States and local communities appear to have had some success in developing and implementing a number of these environmental and policy supports for healthy eating and active living9-12 and have provided public health decision makers and community leaders a growing evidence-base to draw from in addressing community-wide efforts to prevent obesity. However, there currently is a paucity of established measures with which to evaluate speci­c policy and environmental changes and their apparent impact on the energy-balance behaviors associated with this epidemic. To address this issue, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published a set of Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention.13 The Common Community Measures report seeks to identify and recommend a set of obesity prevention strategies and corresponding suggested measurements that local governments and communities can use to plan, implement, and monitor initiatives to prevent obesity (see Table 11.1).