Our staff of attorneys, city planners, and policy analysts work primarily in four key program areas at ChangeLab Solutions:
Healthy Planning
Growing evidence shows the role neighborhood design plays in promoting access to healthy foods, physical activity, and other factors affecting public health. Our Healthy Planning work focuses on community planning and economic development strategies.
Tobacco Control
Local, state, and federal laws have significantly reduced tobacco-related damage to public health. ChangeLab Solutions focuses on tobacco control policy and legal issues, including policies on secondhand smoke exposure and the sale and promotion of tobacco products.
Childhood Obesity
Strong obesity policy interventions in schools and communities can help improve children’s access to healthy foods and opportunities for safe physical activity. Our childhood obesity prevention work, which includes our Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded program, The National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN), empowers advocates and policy leaders with legally sound guidance and resources to make schools and communities healthier for children.
Healthy Housing
Healthy homes require healthy neighborhoods. Our Healthy Housing project works with communities around the country to help make their housing smokefree, ensure their housing stock in low income neighborhoods is safe and healthy, and redesign their built enviornment to encourage activity for residents.
Our staff has also worked on other public health policy issues as they’ve emerged, including climate change's effects on public health, legal concerns related to TB and pandemic flu, and policies supporting pharmaceutical access for people in need.
All our work is built on the assumption that public health is, in large part, an outcome of institutional and environmental policies that are amenable to change.
Contact us to find out how our staff can help you advance your public health policy goals.