Build success with effective enforcement. Someone who smokes where smoking is prohibited is violating the policy. Enforcement of the smoke-free policy is similar to enforcement of other building policies, like noise or pet restrictions. Be consistent, fair, positive, and pragmatic.

Build success by helping smokers comply with the policy. Some residents who smoke may not be ready or able to stop smoking, but you can work with them to help them comply with the policy.

Build success by supporting cessation among smokers for whom a smoke-free housing policy may provide motivation to quit.

Build success by partnering with local agencies and organizations. Community partners can advise during planning, education residents during implementation, and help support cessation.

Build success by training staff on how to effectively share information about the policy and the importance of consistent enforcement.

Build Success by engaging residents. Residents can be a strong asset in planning, communication, implementation, and compliance efforts.

Times are changing rapidly for families—our households, work and the workforce do not look like they did just a decade ago. Challenges and barriers for parents continue to grow – skyrocketing costs of health care and child care, lack of flexibility at the workplace, and less time at home.

Our aim with this environmental scan was to explore the capacity of public health to advance racial and health equity with community engagement as a central strategy.

To understand more about housing from an epidemiologist’s perspective, we spoke with Earle Chambers, an associate professor in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Medicaid helps low-income seniors, children, people with disabilities, and families get needed health care. Medicaid coverage improves families’ financial security by protecting them from medical debt and helping them stay healthy for work.

The firearm, obesity, and opioid epidemics are among the most important public health crises of our time. Each epidemic has a complex etiology that challenges efforts at mitigation.

Health care in the United States is long overdue for an upheaval. The mismatch between costs, by far the highest in the world, and health outcomes, among the worst in the high-income world, has long been glaring. Perhaps the good news is that the time for such an upheaval has come.

Policymakers seek to transform the US health care system along two dimensions simultaneously: alternative payment models and new models of provider organization. This transformation is supposed to transfer risk to providers and make them more accountable for health care costs and quality.

Today, health care providers’ complaints about legal obstacles to health information exchange (HIE) may be better understood as reflecting concerns about the economic and competitive risks of information sharing.

Systematic analysis of health care complaints can improve quality and safety by providing patient-centered insights that localize issues and shed light on difficult-to-monitor problems.

This article shows how a complex systems perspective may be used to analyze the commercial determinants of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), and it explains how this can help with (1) conceptualizing the problem of NCDs and (2) developing effective policy interventions.

To explore the benefits and challenges of rapid re-housing support services, How Housing Matters asked a group of experts to weigh in.

This research brief explores how access to rental assistance affects the self-management behaviors of people with type 2 diabetes.

Affordable housing campaigns are not new, of course, but what is unprecedented and transformative about Opportunity Starts at Home is the scope and diversity of the partners that are joining forces to advocate for more robust and equitable federal housing policies.

Delegates at the 2018 American Medical Association Annual Meeting in Chicago adopted several policies intended to alleviate chronic homelessness and racial housing segregation

Quality affordable housing can be a “vaccine” which prevents long-term health problems and promotes healthy, productive lives. When a family’s housing situation is unaffordable and unstable, chances to lead a healthy life dwindle rapidly.

We know that these patients [high-need, high-cost (HCHC)] make up 5 percent of the population but account for 50 percent of health care costs.

A new mapping tool can help you learn more about the state of environmental health, wherever you live in Washington.

Housing quality, instability, and unaffordability threaten the well-being of millions of children across the nation.

A collection of resources that cover public health issues such as dental care, diabetes, vaccines, and nutrition.