The National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council released its 2014 annual report on July 1. The report describes the goals of the Council’s National Prevention Strategy and outlines developments and progress made toward those goals.
[Photo: Cover of National Prevention Council’s 2014 annual report on the National Prevention Strategy]
“The National Prevention Strategy is all about making healthy choices the easy choices,” said Dr. Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, professor and chair of nutrition at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “It’s about working together to improve health for people in all walks of life, at every age.”
Dr. Mayer-Davis was appointed by President Obama in 2011 to serve on the National Prevention Council’s advisory group on prevention, health promotion, and integrative and public health. She remains on the council and was actively involved in this year’s report.
The report highlights efforts overseen by several federal agencies to create a tobacco-free generation, improve access to healthy foods and implement prevention and wellness programs, as well as dozens of other initiatives.
“This is a national effort to establish and coordinate a number of different programs across several different federal agencies,” Dr. Mayer-Davis said. “In fact, in a lot of ways this is a national effort to implement efforts that we have been spearheading here at the Gillings School for years.”
Dr. Mayer-Davis pointed to the Gillings School’s established record of research and service aimed at preventing obesity, food disparities, tobacco use, access to clean water, and health and wellness.
Some recent examples of the School’s research efforts include:
The full National Prevention Council report can be found here.
Note: The Council encourages conversations in social media about the value of the report and the work of the Council. Use hashtags #NPSAction and #Gillings to join in.