Steps to a Healthier Washington

The mission of the Steps to a Healthier Washington program is to integrate existing chronic disease programs to achieve policy and systems changes. A training session was initiated and targeted Washington State Department of Health staff members, grantees, contractors, and other local and state public health partners.

The goal of the training session was to improve capacity to initiate cross-program policy changes that would result in health-promoting environments in communities, schools, workplaces, and health care systems. The training included a combination of interactive and didactic methods to account for different learning styles. Breakout sessions were sorted by risk factor and disease, domain, and geographic region.

The mission of the Steps to a Healthier Washington program is to integrate existing chronic disease programs to achieve policy and systems changes.

There were over 200 attendees at the training. Thirty-nine percent of those individuals had long-term increases in accurate identification of policy and 68% of respondents had increased self-efficacy for identifying common policy change priorities with diverse partners.