The demand for policy and environmental changes to increase healthy behaviors, such as physical activity, generates a call for a changing workforce. Today’s public health practitioner must be able to step beyond the instructional settings to influence organizations, corporate and government alike, to adopt formal and informal policies, and to influence change within physical and social environm...

OBJECTIVES Effective government policies are essential to increase the healthiness of food environments. The International Network for Food and Obesity/non-communicable diseases (NCDs) Research, Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS) has developed a monitoring tool (the Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI)) and process to rate government policies to create healthy food environment...

Public health obesity prevention experts have recently emphasized a policy systems and environmental change approach. Absent, however, are studies describing how practitioners transition from policy adoption to implementation. In the realm of food policy, financing programs to incentivize healthy food retail development in communities classified as "underserved" are underway at the local, state...

The rise in obesity levels in the U.S. in the past several decades has been dramatic, with serious implications for public health and the economy. Experiences in tobacco control and other public health initiatives have shown that public policy may be a powerful tool to effect structural change to alter population-level behavior. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute convened a meeting to discu...

. The set of core competencies for public health in Canada defines advocacy as “speaking, writing or acting in favour of a particular cause, policy or group of people” and considers it to be one of “the competencies required to influence and work with others to improve the health and well-being of the public through the pursuit of a common goal.” A public health practitioner is expected to be a...