Choose Health LA Restaurants is a partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and local restaurants to promote healthier meal choices for customers across Los Angeles County. Given that nearly two in three LA County adults and children are overweight or obese, it is critical that we work together to help reverse this trend. One important strategy to address the issue is to offer customers healthier options at restaurants. Choose Health LA Restaurants works with restaurant operators to expand healthier choices by offering customers smaller portion size options and healthier children’s meals in addition to existing menu items.

To suggest a restaurant for the program, email choosehealthla@ph.lacounty.gov

To learn more about the program, including how to become a participating restaurant, click here

The four-year Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Initiative is bringing together a broad range of partners to implement community-based public education, skills-building and environmental changes that promote physical activity and healthy eating. The grant, funded by First 5 LA, targets the nearly one million LA County children 0-5 years of age and their families, and includes three focus areas: Choose Health LA Kids, reducing obesity in child care settings and managing obesity in moms.

For more information,click here.

The City of Los Angeles is currently developing a Health and Wellness Chapter for their General Plan, which will help elevate health as a priority for future planning and development in Los Angeles. As part of this effort, the City has developed a Health Atlas, a new tool that comprehensively examines health issues in Los Angeles and illustrates the role that neighborhoods play in the health of Angelenos. The Health Atlas analyzes over 100 health outcomes and related topics, including the geographic concentration of issues such as childhood obesity, pollution, and crime. The Atlas shows that life expectancy throughout Los Angeles’ neighborhoods can vary by up to 12 years, highlighting the opportunity to address health inequities through better land use and community design. Funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and The California Endowment, this multi-sector initiative provides the first update to the General Plan Framework in over 20 years, and includes the development of complimentary programs to address issues identified in the Health Atlas.

The Health Atlas will be available on the Department of City Planning’s website at click here.

For more information about the Health and Wellness Project, please visit click here.

On September 27, 2011 the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) was notified of a $9.8 million grant award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Community Transformation Grants (CTG) initiative. The funding will support the first year of a planned five-year initiative to prevent chronic disease and reduce health disparities in the county population through interventions that create healthy and safe environments and improve access to evidence-based clinical preventive services.

For more information about the grant, click here.

On March 19, 2010 the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH), announced the receipt of an unprecedented amount of funding for public health efforts addressing chronic disease in the county. The grant, from the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative, gives LA County approximately $32 million over a two-year period for activities addressing obesity, physical activity, nutrition, tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke. The projects will focus on making policy, systems, and environmental changes that positively impact an individual's access to safe places to exercise and ability to purchase nutritional foods, and an individual's right to smoke-free living, working, and social spaces.

For more information about the CDC grant, click here.

For more information about DPH’s Renewing Environments for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness (RENEW) Program, click here.

The Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention releases a report describing the various data sources on chronic disease surveillance and research, generated and/or used by the Division to assess public health issues and to develop more effective programs and policies for chronic disease prevention and control. To read the full report, click here.