Healthy kids shown against the background of a sky.

Strategies

The We Can!® national movement uses the following key strategies to promote healthy weight in children: materials development and dissemination, community partnerships, national and corporate partnerships, media outreach, and program assessment.

Materials Development and Dissemination

For the We Can! program, the NIH has developed and/or selected many science-based resources and tools that are appropriate for parents, caregivers, and communities, including:

  • Curricula that educate parents and caregivers and children about healthy nutrition, physical activity, and reducing screen time. All of these curricula are designed to help children maintain a healthy weight.
  • Numerous resources designed for community organizers and program planners to run the We Can! program in a variety of settings.  These include toolkits, an online training, promotional materials, and many more.
  • Many consumer-friendly tools, tip sheets, and interactive resources for families, communities, and health care professionals.
  • A Web site with helpful content that offers the entire program’s tools and resources for download, mostly free of charge. Visit the tools and resources section to see a complete list.

Check out our general program publications for more background information on We Can!, including a fact sheet, short video segments, a PowerPoint presentation, and more.

Community Partnerships

An important strategy of We Can! is community involvement. We Can! provides communities with a flexible, turn-key, and evidence-based program. Today, more than 1,590 diverse sites in the United States and 13 other countries have partnered with We Can! by registering to run programming as We Can! community sites. Registrants include:

Learn more about community sites and read some success stories from several of our community sites.

National and Corporate Partnerships

Since its 2005 launch, We Can! has also partnered with more than 40 national organizations, which are helping to spread We Can! programming to a wider audience through their networks. Partners include Fortune 500 companies, many of whom are either implementing program activities or are in discussion with the NIH on how to best use their resources to help strengthen the We Can! movement.

Media Outreach

We Can! messages have been heard by millions of families and others across the nation thanks to stories covered by national and local print, radio, television, and online news media.

Program Assessment

When the program completed its first year of activities, NIH sought to better understand the program strengths and weaknesses by conducting a process and outcome of the first 14 community sites (i.e., the We Can! Founding Intensive Sites) that ran We Can!. Findings showed improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in both parents and youth participants. See details in the full report.  pdf icon (4.5 MB)

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We Can Community of Practice

Community Spotlight

Training Success: Over 700 People Prepped to Spread We Can! Programming!
Thanks to the hard work of a number of community sites, and the support of We Can! partner SUBWAY® restaurants, hundreds of people learned how to run local We Can! programs successfully, at nine regional trainings across the country.