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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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Southwest Indiana Project AWARE (Vanderburgh County and Warrick County, Indiana)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Urban

Goal: The Goals of Project Aware include:

1) Increase capacity of adults to respond to behavioral health issues of adolescents
2) Increase the mental health literacy of youth-interacting adults
3) Link adolescents with behavioral health issues to mental, emotional, and behavioral health assistance and services
4) Increase the number of collaborative partnerships with youth- serving community agencies/programs
5) Conduct outreach and engagement strategies with adolescents and their families/caregivers to increase awareness of and promote positive behavioral health

Impact: Collaboration and partnerships can help drive awareness of mental health issues and training adolescents in Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) can help spread awareness of mental health resources and referrals to professionals.

Sunday Parkways (Chicago)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: To bring a culture of physical activity to the Latino and African-American communities in Chicago in order to decrease health problems related to inactivity.

The Coal Combustion Products Partnership (C2P2) (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air

Goal: C2P2 aims for the following goals:
-Increase the use of coal fly ash in concrete by 43 percent, from 14 million metric tons per year in 2001 to 20 million metric tons by 2010.
-Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from concrete production by approximately 6 million metric tons by 2010.

The Internet-based Successful Aging (iSAGE) project

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: As medicine becomes more complex and specialized by the minute, the communication gulf between doctors and their patients is becoming progressively insurmountable. The Stanford Internet-based Successful aging (iSAGE) project is a project aimed at improving quality of life and quality of care for all older Americans from diverse backgrounds. iSAGE offers an entirely web-based, video rich immersion training in the principles of successful aging for the general public as well as health workers. It is unique in that it allows learners to specialize in the health and health care of thirteen different ethno-cultural groups commonly seen in the US.

The Strategies for Workforce Inclusion and Family Training (SWIFT) Project (Minneapolis, MN)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Employment

Goal: Since Project SWIFT was not a direct service program, the major goal was for youth to receive direct services from partner agencies. Toward this aim, the project educated parents and staff from partner agencies to better meet the needs of youth with disabilities.

Washington State Translation Program (Washington)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Government Assistance, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of this program is to ensure that Washington's Social and Health Services are available and accessible to all Washington residents.

Westside Infant-Family Network (Los Angeles County)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: Westside Infant-Family Network’s mission is to ensure that families with prenatal through three-year-olds receive the mental health care and community resources they need to strengthen their families and achieve healthy parent-child relationships.

¡Cuídate! (Philadelphia, PA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of Cuídate is to reduce HIV transmission among Latino youth through culturally tailored programming.

A Matter of Balance

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The Matter of Balance/Volunteer Lay Leader (MOB/VLL) program is designed to reduce the fear of falling, stop the fear of falling cycle, and improve the activity levels among community-dwelling older adults. The goal of the program is to use volunteer lay leaders as facilitators, in order to make the program affordable to offer in the community setting.

Impact: When following up one year after the program, participants reported significant gains in fall management and there was a trend to increased exercise level as well. In addition, participants sustained a reduction in monthly falls.

A Text Message-Based Intervention for Weight Loss (San Diego County, CA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Adults

Goal: To reduce weight in overweight and obese patients using mobile-based text and multimedia messaging.

Impact: At the end of a 4-month period, participants in the text-message based intervention showed greater weight loss than the control group.

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.