Policy Opportunities to Promote Healthy Beverages in Clinical Settings

Access to Healthy Beverages

Action steps to increase access to healthy beverages include:

Ensure that all practices and hospitals have accessible safe, clean drinking water.
Healthcare institutions can serve as a model for other institutions and agencies by ensuring that clean sources of tap water are available for patients, staff, and visitors.

Recommended by:

• Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC): Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities
• Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report: Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation

For more information:

• Safe Water Drinking Act
  
  

Limit Access to Unhealthy Beverages

Action steps to limit access to unhealthy beverages include:

Model healthy beverage choices and policies in your practice.
Physicians and other medical professionals are role models for their patients. Physicians who screen and counsel their patients on nutrition and physical activity habits can influence patient behavior by example. In addition, health providers can influence organizational policies and practices to promote healthy eating/drinking and activity within their clinical facility. For example:

• provide healthy food options for employees during the workday and at all meetings
• discourage sugared beverage consumption by employees by prohibiting consumption in areas visible by patients
• do not offer sugared or unhealthy treats or beverages to patients (i.e. lollipops)
• do not allow any marketing of food or beverages to children/adolescents

Recommended by:

• AAP: Dietary Recommendations for Children and Adolescents: A Guide for Practitioners
• CDC Obesity Prevention Toolkit for Creating Healthy Hospital Environments: Making Healthier Food, Beverage, and Physical Activity Choices

For more information:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Healthier Worksite Initiative
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Obesity Prevention
• Partnership for Prevention: Investing in Health: Proven Health Promotion Practices for Workplace
• Eat Smart Move More: Tools for Healthy Worksite

Restrict sugar sweetened beverages from cafeterias and mobile vending machines in practices and hospitals.
Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with higher daily caloric intake and greater risk of obesity. Policies that restrict the availability of sugar sweetened beverages might discourage the consumption of high-caloric beverages by staff, patients and their families.

Recommended by:

• CDC Obesity Prevention Toolkit for Creating Healthy Hospital Environments: Making Healthier Food, Beverage, and Physical Activity Choices
• Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report: Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation

For more information:

• San Antonio Healthy Collaborative Sample Vending Guidelines
• New Hamshire DHHS: Healthy Food Outlets
• Bay Area/San Diego and Imperial Regional Nutrition Network Vending Machine Toolkit
• Kaiser Permanente's Healthy Picks Program