American journal of preventive medicine
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Childhood obesity is a challenging public health issue facing communities throughout the U. S. Local efforts are believed to be essential to assuring environments that support physical activity and healthy food/beverage consumption among children and their families. ⋯ Data collection occurred in 2013-2015; data analysis will be completed in 2016. As part of the Healthy Communities Study, researchers designed a measurement system to assess the number and scope of community programs and policies and to examine possible associations between calculated "intensity" scores for these programs and policies and behavioral and outcome measures related to healthy weight among children. This report describes the protocol used to capture and code instances of community programs and policies, to characterize attributes of community programs and policies related to study hypotheses, and to calculate the intensity of combinations of community programs and policies (i.e., using the attributes of change strategy, duration, and reach).