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Promising Practices

The Promising Practices database informs professionals and community members about documented approaches to improving community health and quality of life.

The ultimate goal is to support the systematic adoption, implementation, and evaluation of successful programs, practices, and policy changes. The database provides carefully reviewed, documented, and ranked practices that range from good ideas to evidence-based practices.
Learn more about the ranking methodology.

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Reach Out and Read (Nationwide)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Adults, Families

Goal: The mission of Reach Out and Read is to help prepare young children to succeed in school, by partnering with physicians to encouraging parents and children to read aloud together.

Impact: Reach Out and Read improves children's language development by 3-6 months and improves language ability with increased exposure to the program.

Reconnecting Youth (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Teens

Goal: The Reconnecting Youth program has three main goals: 1) increase school performance; 2) decrease drug involvement; and 3) decrease suicide-risk behaviors.

Impact: Significant increases in positive connections with teachers, friends, and family members; significant improvements in GPA; lasting reductions in hard drug use; decreases in anger-control problems; reductions in depression and hopelessness; and increases in enhancing personal control were observed.

Required Influenza Vaccination for Children in Licensed Child Care or Preschool Programs

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Governance, Children

Goal: The goal of requiring that all Connecticut children receive at least 1 dose of influenza vaccine each year to attend a licensed child care program and preschool setting is to reduce influenza transmission and decrease influenza-associated hospitalizations statewide.

Impact: Requiring vaccination for admission into a licensed child care program or preschool program has helped to increase vaccination rates among children in Connecticut and reduced serious morbidity from influenza statewide.

ReWired for Change (Baltimore, MD)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Adults, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: ReWired for Change works to empower at risk youth and families living in under-served communities through education, media and social advocacy, and intergenerational programming.

Rochester AIDS Prevention Project (RAPP) (Rochester, NY)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goals of the program are: 1) to promote abstinence maintenance among sexually abstinent students and encourage safer sex practices to sexually active students, 2) compare the effect of RAPP when taught by different providers, and 3) to explore the factors that impact a student's decision to engage in sexual activity.

Impact: Regular teacher-taught male (p=.001) and female students (p=.05) and peer-taught male students (p=.02) had the highest rates of delaying the onset of sexual activity.

Rural medical-legal partnership and advocacy: a three-year follow-up study. (southern Illinois)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy, Rural

Goal: Medical-legal partnerships perform advocacy services for vulnerable and under-served populations. These populations are typically burdened disproportionately by legal and medical problems. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of a rural medical-legal partnership (MLP).

Impact: The rural medical-legal partnership continued to show social and financial impacts, such as health care recovery dollars (319% return on investment between 2007 and 2009), Social Security benefits, family law services, and end-of-life guidance.

Safe Streets (Baltimore, MD)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To combat the epidemic of violence among Baltimore’s youth and support traditional public safety strategies using a combination of public health and human service models to reduce violence.

Impact: It was estimated that the program was associated with 5.4 fewer homicide incidents and 34.6 fewer nonfatal shooting incidents during 112 cumulative months of intervention post observations.

Safety Counts (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Adults, Women, Men

Goal: The goal of the Safety Counts is to reduce behaviors which place drug users at a high risk of HIV infection.

Salem County School-to-Careers Initiative (Salem County, NJ)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Children, Rural

Goal: The goal of this program is to help at-risk youth and young adults to finish high school, take college-level classes, and have structured work experiences that will lead to successful transitions to adulthood.

Salud Para Su Corazón (Health for Your Heart) (Washington D.C.)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of Salud Para Su Corazón is to raise awareness and knowledge of heart disease risk factors and prevention among Latino populations.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success and/or promise in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
  2. The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures of improvement in outcome of interest (i.e. increase in voter registration, not just delivery of voter registration drive) and/ or the outcome measure is increased or improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant.

A Good Idea meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. The program evaluation is limited to descriptive measure(s) of success/accomplishment (i.e., program participation rates, number of services/education sessions/radio messages provided). Note: oftentimes, the program has been newly implemented and a program evaluation has not yet been conducted. Programs that have not yet been evaluated, but which show promise in improving health or quality of life, are classified as Good Ideas until an evaluation is conducted.

An Evidence-Based Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
  2. The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures showing improvement in the outcome(s) of interest after the implementation of the program (i.e. increase in smoking cessation, not just the delivery of a smoking cessation program). The outcome measure(s) is/are compared at relevant time periods before and after the intervention or program implementation. Alternatively, the evaluation study compares the outcome(s) between an intervention group and an appropriate control group.
  3. The study is of peer-review quality and presents numbers in a scientific manner; measurements of precision and reliability are included (e.g. confidence intervals, standard errors), results from statistical tests show a significant difference or change in the outcome measure(s), and relevant point estimates and p-values are presented. Note: if the results from an evaluation of a program are presented in a scientific manner and the outcome measure is improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant, the practice is classified as effective and not evidence-based.