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.

Submit a Promising Practice

Emergency Room Intervention for Suicidal Adolescent Females

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

Goal: The Emergency Room Intervention for Suicidal Adolescent Females focuses on changing the conceptualization of suicidal behavior and expectations for therapy, thereby increasing attendance at outpatient therapy and decreasing future suicide risk.

Impact: The intervention increases the likelihood of follow-up treatment in an outpatient clinic and reduces suicide risk among adolescent females who have visited an emergency room due to a suicide attempt.

EnhanceFitness (Seattle, WA)

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

Goal: The goal of EnhanceFitness is to encourage older adults to engage in regular physical activity to improve their health and well-being.

Impact: EnhanceFitness participants reported a 13% improvement in social function, a 52% improvement in depression, and a 35% improvement in physical functioning. Additionally, participants' healthcare costs were 21% less than those of non-participants after one year.

EnLace (Leadership and Civic Engagement)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Public Safety, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Rural

Goal: In an effort to prepare and engage community residents to take a more participatory role in their communities, Monterey County Health Department (MCHD) developed and has offered since 2014 a leadership and civic engagement program (enLACE) that addresses the social determinants of health, community engagement and their relationship to the health of the community.

Environmental Health Leadership Training (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Environmental Justice, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Environmental Health Leadership Training is to inform and empower the predominately low income people of three urban communities in Northern Manhattan (Central Harlem, West Harlem, and Washington Heights) to improve their capacity to organize for community environmental health and justice in New York City. The long term goal of these efforts is to help intervene and reduce exposure to environmental toxicants which are adversely affecting the health of disadvantaged, medically underserved, predominantly African American and Latino populations in Northern Manhattan.

Environmental Improvements Brought by the Legal Interventions in the Homes of Poorly Controlled Inner-City Adult Asthmatic Patients (New York City, New York)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Urban

Goal: The goal is to use a medical-legal collaborative intervention to force landlords into maintaining healthy living conditions for residents with poorly controlled asthma.

Impact: This proof-of concept study exhibits that medical-legal collaboration can significantly impact the control of inner-city asthmatics by improving their domestic environment.

Examining Health Care Costs Among MANNA Clients and a Comparison Group

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity

Goal: MANNA uses nutrition to improve health for people with serious illnesses who need nourishment to heal. By providing medically tailored meals and nutrition education, we empower people to improve their health and quality of life.

Impact: MANNA members report significant health care cost reductions due to improved health.

Families Learning and Growing (F.L.A.G.ship) (Marin)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Literacy, Families

Goal: The program's goal is to provide school readiness activities for families with children, from birth to five years old, who live in isolated and under-served areas of Marin County.

Family Peer Support (Hamilton County, Ohio)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Poverty, Adults, Women, Men, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Family Peer Support program is to increase family economic and social self-sufficiency, and to connect parents to needed physical health, behavior health, and educational resources for their child. Family peer support programs generally focus on fostering encouragement of personal responsibility and self-determination, improving family health and wellness, and supporting engagement and communication with providers and systems of care. Research shows that peer support programs promote empowerment and self-esteem, self-management, engagement and social inclusion, as well as improving the social networks of families who receive these services. Research evidence qualifies peer support services as evidence-based through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality guidelines.

Salzer MS, Schwenk E, Brusilovskiy E: Certified peer specialist roles and activities: results from a national survey. Psychiatric Services 61:520–523, 2010.
Repper J, Carter T: A review of the literature on peer support in mental health services. Journal of Mental Health 20: 392–411, 2011.
Cook JA: Peer-delivered wellness recovery services: from evidence to widespread implementation. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 35:87–89, 2011

Fit Kids/Fit Families (Wisconsin)

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

Goal: To improve children's nutritional status, increase their activity level, enhance their self-esteem, and create life-long health habits by using a multidisciplinary, community- and family-based system approach, and by engaging local health care professionals with community agencies.

Impact: The Fit Kids/Fit Families program shows that multidisciplinary, community- and family-based approaches to children's exercise, weight, & nutrition can have an effect on healthier nutritional choices, increased physical activity, decreased sedentary activity, healthier behaviors, and BMI reductions.

Focus on Youth (FOY) with Informed Parents and Children Together (ImPACT) (Baltimore, MD)

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

Goal: The goal of Focus on Youth is to teach youth the skills and knowledge they need to protect themselves from HIV and other STDs.

Impact: The Focus on Youth intervention increased self-reported condom use and positively affected perceptions six months after the end of the program.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
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:

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.
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.
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.