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.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban
The goals of the Holistic Health Recovery Program are to promote health and improve quality of life of injection drug users.
Implementation of the program resulted in a decrease in addition severity, a decrease in risk behavior, and significant improvement in behavioral skills and quality of life.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Women, Families
To increase daily fruits and vegetables servings by half in women served by WIC participants with the long term goal of reducing risk of cancer.
The Maryland WIC 5-A-Day Program shows that while multi-faceted community based interventions can effectively promote and sustain dietary change among low-income populations in order to reduce the risk of cancer, many obstacles remain in implementing such programs.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Economic Climate
Memphis Fast Forward is the shared vision and unprecedented action plan to create good jobs, a better-educated workforce, a safer community, a healthier citizenry and efficient government in Memphis and Shelby County.
Major violent and property crime were reduced by 22.8% and 25.5%. The pool of high-potential teacher candidates increased from 21 to 1,800 in one year. More than 15,000 jobs were created. New capital investment of $4.2 billion was generated. Local governments saved more than $75 million.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
The goal of this program is to reduce the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana among adolescents.
Evaluations of the project showed that there was a smaller increase in students who intend to use cigarettes, alcohol, and tobacco within the upcoming months and that there were significant effects on the proportion of students reporting the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and tobacco.
Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Children, Teens, Adults, Families
The goal of the Mispillion River Greenway is to provide new transportation options for downtown travel and encourage reinvestment in the business district.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use
The goal of this program is to effectively treat substance abuse by using the patient's social support network to support abstinence.
Among Network Therapy clients, 64.5% of all samples submitted were negative for opioids, compared with 45.3% of all samples submitted by medication maintenance clients. Furthermore, 88% of urine samples were negative for cocaine for Network Therapy participants, compared with 66% of urine samples collected from treatment-as-usual clients.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children
The goal of this program is to reduce the impact of lead poisoning and to prevent new cases of lead poisoning among Niagara County children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women, Urban
1) to improve pregnancy outcomes by promoting health-related behaviors;
2) to improve child health, development and safety by promoting competent care-giving; and
3) to enhance parent life-course development by promoting pregnancy planning, educational achievement, and employment.
The program also has two secondary goals: to enhance families' material support by providing links with needed health and social services, and to promote supportive relationships among family and friends.
The Nurse Family Partnership Program has shown to improve pregnancy outcomes, improve child health and development, and increase economic self-sufficiency.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Urban
The goal of the Options/Opciones Project is to reduce or eliminate risky sexual and drug use behaviors of HIV-infected patients.
The Options/Opciones Project shows that a clinician-delivered HIV prevention intervention targeting HIV-infected patients can result in reductions in unprotected sex and that interventions of this kind should be integrated into routine HIV clinical care.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Families
The goal of the Parenting with Love and Limits® (PLL) program is to improve behavioral problems in children by providing therapy and training to parents in order to restore a level of competent, effective parenting and create greater family connectedness.
Youth in the PLL group had significantly greater reductions in conduct disorder problem behaviors compared with youth in the control group. Specifically, they had greater improvements in anxiety/depression, withdrawn/depression, social problems, attention problems, rule-breaking problems, aggressive behaviors, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems.