Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air

Goal: The goal of a wood stove changeout campaign is to reduce the usage of inefficient wood stoves in order to improve air quality.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce alcohol misuse among adolescents.

Impact: Middle school students who receive the curriculum have increased knowledge about alcohol misuse when compared to a control group. Students who received programming in the 10th grade had significantly increased alcohol misuse prevention knowledge, decreased alcohol misuse, and increased refusal skills. During their first year of driving, students who received the curriculum were involved in fewer serious traffic or drug offenses than students in the control group.

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

Goal: ASSIST aims to develop a diverse group consisting of young people that will then influence their peers to defy the idea of smoking thus reducing the number of adolescent smokers and reducing its health effects.

Impact: A peer-led intervention reduced smoking among adolescents at a modest cost: the ASSIST program cost of £32 ($42 USD) (95% CI = £29.70–£33.80) per student. The incremental cost per student not smoking at 2 years was £1,500 ($1984 USD) (95% CI = £669–£9,947).

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

Goal: To improve drinking water consumption among adolescents.

Impact: This study shows that provision of filtered, chilled drinking water in school cafeterias coupled with promotion and education is associated with increased consumption of drinking water at school.

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

Goal: The aims of the BASICS program are 1) to reduce alcohol consumption and its adverse consequences, 2) to promote healthier choices among young adults, and 3) to provide important information and coping skills for risk reduction.

Impact: Students who received a brief individual preventive intervention had significantly greater reductions in negative consequences that persisted over a 4-year period than their control-group counterparts. For those individuals receiving the brief intervention, dependence symptoms were more likely to decrease and less likely to increase.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Families

Goal: The goal of BSFT is to improve a youth's behavior problems by improving family interactions that are presumed to be directly related to the child's symptoms, thus reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors for adolescent drug abuse and other conduct problems.

Impact: Adolescents who participated in BSFT showed a significantly greater reduction in conduct problems than adolescents in the comparison condition, who received a participatory-learning group intervention. BSFT participants also showed a significantly greater reduction in socialized aggression.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To create a culturally appropriate healthy lifestyle educational program for Latino adolescents at highest risk for Type 2 Diabetes.

Impact: The promising findings of this program suggest that a community-based diabetes prevention program for obese Latino youth is a feasible strategy for improving health in this high-risk population.

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

Goal: The goal of the Fit and Strong! program is to improve function among older adults with osteoarthritis.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Families

Goal: The goal of Early Head Start (EHS) is to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, enhance the development of very young children, and promote healthy family functioning. The goal of Head Start is to increase school readiness of young children in low-income families.

Impact: Studies have demonstrated positive effects of the program for both 3- and 4-year-old children on pre-reading, pre-writing, vocabulary, and parent reports of children’s literacy skills. For 3-year-olds, a greater number of parents reported improved access to health care and better health status.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women

Goal: The initiative's primary purpose was to reduce infant mortality by 50 percent and generally improve maternal and infant health in at-risk communities.

Impact: 20% of the Healthy Start program sites had significantly lower rates of low-birth-weight babies than their comparisons. 20% of the sites also had significantly lower rates of very-low-birth-weight babies than their comparisons. Four of the sites had significantly lower pre-term birth rates.