The gold standard for evidence-based public health, The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a primary resource to improve health and prevent disease in states, communities, independent, nonfederal Task Force on Community Preventive Services, The Guide uses comprehensive systemic review methods to evaluate population-oriented health interventions. The recommendations of the Task Force are explicitly linked to the scientific evidence developed during systematic reviews. This volume examines the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions to combat such risky behaviors as tobacco use, physical inactivity, and violence; to reduce the impact and suffering of specific conditions such as cancer, diabetes, vaccine-preventable diseases, and motor vehicle injuries; and to address social determinants oh health such as education, housing, and access to care. The chapters are grouped into three broad categories: changing risk behaviors; reducing specific diseases, injuries, and impairments; and methodological background for the book itself.

The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) provides public health decisions makers with recommendations regarding population based interventions to promote health and to prevent disease, injury, disability, and premature death, appropriate for use by communities and health care systems.

"The Community Guide is a federally sponsored initiative and is part of a family of federal public health initiatives including Healthy People 2010 and the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services." ... "Systematic reviews are conducted for selected interventions within each health topic and organized as a chapter." ... "Community Guide topics are also published in supplements to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine."--"At a glance."

"Decision makers in communities, companies, health departments, health plans and healthcare systems, non-governmental organizations, and at all levels of government can better protect and improve the public's health by knowing what works. For this, they can rely on recommendations by the Community Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force), compiled in The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide; www.thecommunityguide.org). These recommendations identify programs, services, and policies proven effective in a variety of real-world settings--such as communities, worksites, schools, and health plans. Task Force recommendations empower community, local, state, federal, tribal, territorial, corporate, public health, and healthcare decision makers to optimize resources to: Protect and improve health; Reduce demand for future healthcare spending that is driven by preventable disease and disability; and Increase productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. workforce. This report--the Task Force's first Annual Report to Congress--provides background on the Task Force, its methods, findings, and recommendations, and describes both gaps in existing research on community preventive services and priorities for future Task Force efforts."--Page i.