The Healthy Weight Collaborative: Quality Improvement Methods Promoting Healthy Weight

Promoting healthy weight requires innovative approaches and a concerted response across all sectors of society. This commentary features the framework guiding the Healthy Weight Collaborative, a two-phased quality improvement (QI) learning collaborative and key activity of the Collaborate for Healthy Weight initiative. Multi-sector teams from primary care, public health, and community-based organizations use QI to identify, test, and implement program and policy changes in their communities related to promoting healthy weight. We describe the Collaborative’s overall design based on the Action Model to Achieve Healthy People 2020 Goals and our approach of applying QI methods to advance implementation of sustainable ways to promote healthy weight and healthy equity. We provide specifics on measurement and change strategies as well as examples of Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles from teams participating in Phase 1 of the Collaborative. These teams will serve as leaders for sustainable, positive change in their communities.