Within NPLAN's learning communities, a cross-section of experts representing different fields work together on specific policy issues facing the movement.

NPLAN’s learning communities serve as a microcosm of the national childhood obesity prevention movement, providing a forum to talk about its priorities, opportunities and constraints. Perhaps most important, the learning communities help NPLAN staff attorneys anticipate and address the movement’s policy development needs, fostering accountability between NPLAN and the broader constituencies it is designed to serve. Each of NPLAN’s three learning communities consists of about eight leaders from the advocacy, scientific, policy and legal communities. Each learning community is assigned to a broad policy area—limiting marketing to children, for example—and all of its members have expertise in some aspect of the issue to which they are assigned.