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, Adults, Urban
The goal of SUMIT is to reduce unprotected sexual contact between HIV-positive men and their HIV-negative or unknown-serostatus partners.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air
The goal of this partnership is to improve the environmental performance and fuel efficiency of the US freight sector (truck & rail) through the use of a voluntary market incentive system and to encourage retailers/end users to choose trucking and/or rail companies that are environmental leaders in their respective industry segments.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children
The program’s goal is to help young children learn the social and emotional skills necessary for school readiness and success.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Urban
The goals of the Staying Alive program are to teach drug users about how to recognize opiate overdose signs and symptoms, how to respond to any overdose cases by calling 911, and how to use rescue breathing and naloxone administration to reduce life-threatening drug overdose.
Staying Alive reduces mortality due to opiate and heroin drug overdose.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Kansas’s Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success (Step It Up) Project aims to work towards making improvements to policies and practices in child care programs with regard to breastfeeding, child nutrition, physical activity, outdoor learning, and reductions in screen time. Step It Up is an extension of the National Early Care and Education Learning Collaboratives Project (ECELC) and uses a similar learning collaborative model.
Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success has made great improvements in promoting healthy eating and physical activity. The topics of Child Nutrition and Infant & Child Physical Activity had the highest number of increases in best practices. Breastfeeding & Infant Feeding had the highest percentage of best practices being met at pre-assessment (55%).
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
The goal of the program is to decrease school bullying problems by 1) increasing staff awareness and responsiveness, 2) fostering socially responsible beliefs, and 3) teaching social-emotional skills to counter bullying and promote healthy relationships. Thus the program also aims to promote skills (e.g., group joining, conflict resolution) associated with general social competence.
Students in the intervention schools reported significantly less acceptance of bullying/aggression, perceived greater adult responsiveness, and felt more responsible to intervene with friends who were bullied (bystander responsibility) than students in the control schools.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults
SHHC targets individual, social, and built environment levels of behavior change and is designed to improve diet and physical activity behaviors, assess and improve local food and physical environment resources, and shift social norms about active living and healthy eating through civic engagement and capacity building.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Adults, Women, Rural
The goal of Strong Women – Healthy Hearts is to decrease cardiovascular disease among middle-aged women through behavioral changes in diet and physical activity.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults
StrongPeople Strong Bodies is a community-based strength training program aimed at mid-life and older individuals. The benefits of strength training for older individuals have been studied extensively and include increased muscle mass and strength; improved bone density and reduced risk for osteoporosis and related fractures; reduced risk for diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, depression, and obesity; and improved self-confidence, sleep, and vitality.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Teens, Urban
The goal of Students for Nutrition and Exercise is to encourage healthy eating and daily physical activity in middle school students.
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.