Promoting healthy living

Noncommunicable diseases — primarily cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases — are responsible for 63 percent of all deaths worldwide and are largely preventable. We study, test and evaluate what motivates individuals and communities to adopt healthy behaviors. We engage local actors, employ new technologies and use integrated approaches to make communities healthier places to live.

Community-level change in the U.S.

What works to stop someone from smoking or unhealthy eating? While traditional programs have centered on individual behavior change, more recent approaches focus on high-impact, community-level interventions, such as improving municipal policies, systems and environments. FHI 360 provides social marketing and communication training, technical assistance, research and expert advice to communities throughout the country to support their efforts to make it easier for people to live healthier lives.

Technologies address hypertension in Ghana

Estimates indicate that more than one-quarter of Ghana’s adult population has hypertension and only 4 percent actively control it. We work with the Ghana Health Service to increase access to hypertension screening and management by involving community-based health care workers in counseling patients and engaging local businesses with innovative digital health and telemedicine approaches. A patient-level, cloud-based database, electronic guidelines and job aids support health care workers, while SMS texts and voice messages provide reminders and healthy-living tips to help patients adhere to treatment and stay healthy.

We assisted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Community Health in producing a series of videos aimed at bridging the health equity gap among low-income, minority communities. The series, called “Making the Business Case for Prevention,” shows how African-American and Hispanic business leaders are making healthy living easier for underserved community members and how these actions have a positive effect on growing local businesses.