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

Parent-Child Home Program (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families

Goal: To prepare children of disadvantaged families for academic success and to strengthen families through intensive home visiting.

Impact: When families are engaged in facilitated discussion, the participating families tend to talk more, read more, and have more positive interactions with their children. They engage in more educational activities at home and in their communities.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of PCIT is to improve the behavior of children suffering from conduct disorders by strengthening the parent-child relationship and teaching parenting and discipline skills.

Parenting With Love and Limits (Savannah, GA)

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

Goal: 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.

Impact: 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 Specifically, they had greater improvements in anxiety/depression, withdrawn/depression, social problems, attention problems, rule-breaking problems, aggressive behaviors, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems.

Partnership for Health (California)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases

Goal: The goal of Partnership for Health is to reach HIV positive patients during regular doctor visits and increase their knowledge, skills, and motivations to practice safer sex.

Impact: Brief provider counseling emphasizing the negative consequences of unsafe sex can reduce HIV transmission behaviors in HIV-positive patients presenting with risky behavioral profiles.

Pasos Adelante (Arizona)

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

Goal: Pasos Adelante is a lifestyle intervention that aims to prevent and control chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes in Mexican Americans by providing a supporting environment for improving nutrition and increasing walking activity in U.S.-Mexico border communities.

plaNYC (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Energy & Sustainability, Urban

Goal: The goal of plaNCY is to ensure a higher quality of life for New Yorkers, and reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.

Prime Time Palm Beach County (Palm Beach, FL)

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

Goal: The goal of Prime Time Palm Beach County is to improve the quality of school-age afterschool programs through assessment, guidance, and support.

Impact: Based on the 2009 study findings, Prime Time's Quality Improvement System resulted in improvements made to afterschool programs which enhanced quality programming and important developmental learning experiences for youth.

Project BOOST (Building Options and Opportunities for Students) (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: The goal of the program is to provide students with opportunities that will help them gain admission to high-achieving high schools.

Project EX

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce or stop smoking among adolescents.

Impact: At 3-month follow-up, 17% of youths in the treatment conditions reported having quit smoking for at least 30 days, compared with only 8% of those teens in the control condition. These positive effects were also demonstrated when moved from a clinic setting to the classroom, as students in the program condition experienced a greater reduction in weekly smoking and monthly smoking, at 6-and-12-month follow-ups.

Project Northland

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

Goal: The program’s goal is to delay the age when young people begin drinking and to reduce drinking among those who have already started.

Impact: Studies have shown that by the end of the intervention, participating students were significantly less likely to drink alcohol than nonparticipants. Also, students who did not use alcohol before participating in the program were less likely to use alcohol after the intervention than similar youth who did not participate.

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.