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

Goal: The goal of this program was to lower the Body Mass Index (BMI) of obese children, and thus decrease the prevalence of obesity, through a multi-faceted lifestyle intervention program.

Impact: Group based interventions are beneficial in reducing BMI and creating healthy lifestyles in young, obese individuals.

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

Goal: The Second Step program is designed to increase students’ school success and decrease problem behaviors by promoting social-emotional competence and self-regulation.

Impact: A number of evaluations of the Second Step program have been conducted. Evaluations have found reductions in fighting and physical aggression, gains in pro-social skills and behavior, increased social competence, and increased knowledge of social skills.

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: Both local and state governments face huge challenges in providing senior populations access to public, agency, professional and family caregivers, and community services that allow seniors to remain independent. The complex maze of constantly changing program and service eligibility rules challenge even the most knowledgeable senior service providers. Fragmentation within senior service agencies further results in duplication of services, unnecessary waiting lists, and caregiver and volunteer burnout. This resource attempts to address those problems by providing quick and easy access to a variety of programs.

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: Smart Growth has three straightforward goals:
- to save our most valuable remaining natural resources before they are forever lost,
- to support existing communities and neighborhoods by targeting state resources to support development in areas where the infrastructure is already in place or planned to support it, and
- to save taxpayers millions of dollars in the unnecessary cost of building the infrastructure required to support sprawl.

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to teach conflict-resolution skills to middle-school students.

Impact: Studies showed a statistically significant increase in students' awareness of how their own behaviors contribute to the escalation of a conflict situation for students participating in SMARTteam when compared with the control group not receiving the intervention. Students in the intervention group were also less likely to value violence as an option in conflict situations than their peers in the control group.

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

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to enhance protective factors associated with reducing suicide among high school students.

Impact: The Sources of Strength program was successful in increasing students likelihood of seeking help from an adult at school, as well as those adults ability to help suicidal students.

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

Goal: The goal of Strong-For-Life home-based exercise program is to promote activity and reduce disability among older adults.

Impact: Home-based resistance exercise programs designed for older persons with disabilities hold promise as an effective public health strategy.

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

Goal: The goal of Students for Nutrition and Exercise is to encourage healthy eating and daily physical activity in middle school students.

Impact: The SNaX program shows that programs which train peer advocates to encourage healthy eating and daily physical activity in students can serve to benefit those trained as peer advocates after the intervention.

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Employment

Goal: The goal of this program is to help high-risk youth develop marketable skills and to instill in students the values of dignity, responsibility and community.

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

Goal: The goal of the Teen Health Project is to provide adolescents with the skills necessary to prevent HIV risk behaviors.

Impact: The Teen Health Project shows that community-level interventions that include skills training and engage adolescents in neighborhood-based HIV prevention activities can produce and maintain reductions in sexual risk behavior, including delaying sexual debut and increasing condom use.