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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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Home-Delivered Meals Postdischarge From Heart Failure Hospitalization (GOURMET-HF) (Columbia University Medical Center, the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Health System, and the University of Michigan Health System)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults

Goal: The goals of GOURMET-HF are to assess the safety of the intervention, including effects on cardiac biomarkers and rehospitalization burden.

Impact: Home-delivered DASH/SRD after HF hospitalization appear safe in selected patients and had favorable effects on HF clinical status and 30-day readmissions. The GOURMET-HF pilot study suggests that postdischarge nutritional support has the potential to improve HF symptoms and reduce readmissions

I Can Problem Solve (ICPS)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children

Goal: The goal of this program is to teach children effective problem-solving skills.

Impact: Studies demonstrated that ICPS participants scored better than the control group on impulsiveness, inhibition, and total behavior problems; showed fewer high-risk behaviors than never-trained controls; showed improvement in positive, prosocial behaviors and decreases in antisocial behaviors; and performed better on standardized achievement tests.

Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills Model HIV Intervention (Connecticut)

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

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to increase HIV preventative behavior among inner-city minority adolescents.

Impact: Students in the classroom-based intervention group had more sustained changes in HIV prevention behavior over time compared to those in the peer-based intervention groups.

Insights (Washington and North Carolina)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women

Goal: The goal of Insights is to increase condom use among young women at risk for HIV and other STDs.

Impact: Insights proves that tailored cognitive/behavioral minimal self-help interventions hold promise as HIV/STD prevention strategies for diverse populations of young at-risk women.

Intervention to Reduce Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors in Infants (Finland)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families

Goal: To decrease saturated fat consumption and thus reduce coronary heart disease risk factors in young children.

Impact: STRIP's intervention of diet counseling that began at a child's infancy favorably impacted the child's diet through childhood up to ages 8 or 10, but the goal of 2:1 unsaturated-saturated fatty acid ratio in a child's diet was not met for either intervention or control group.

It's Your Game: Keep It Real (Texas)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens

Goal: The goal of It's Your Game: Keep It Real is to reduce teen pregnancy, prevent STI transmission, and delay teen sexual activity in middle school students.

Impact: Participants in the It’s Your Game: Keep It Real intervention program were less likely to initiate sex by the ninth grade when compared to the control group.

Keep It Up (New York, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Teens, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of Keep It Up is to provide health screening and preventative care to Black men to promote HIV prevention and other health problems.

KIP (Knowledge Is Power) Program (Washington County, NY)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Other Conditions

Goal: The goals of the KIP Program are to instill in the inmate community the knowledge and power to make healthy decisions and try to incorporate risk and harm reduction ideas into inmate lifestyles.

Land Value Taxation (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Economic Climate

Goal: The goal of the split-rate property tax is to encourage urban renewal and discourage land speculation.

LifeSkills Training

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce substance abuse among adolescents.

Impact: Evaluations of LST showed significantly lower smoking, alcohol, and marijuana use 6 years after initial baseline assessment. Prevalence of use of these substances was 44% lower and weekly use of multiple drugs was 66% lower for those receiving LST than for the control students.

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.