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 Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families
Goal: The Congenital Heart Disease Screening Program values early diagnosis of Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) with a goal of making screening for CHD a standard practice for all newborns.
Impact: The physicians at Children's National in the National Heart Institute created a toolkit that nurseries may use to start a screening program to improve detection of serious CHD.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of Cook Like a Chef is to teach children aged 11-13 about healthy cooking and eating habits.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Adults, Families
Goal: The goal of Cooking Matters is to empower families by providing them with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to prepare healthy and affordable meals.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families
Goal: Cook for Kids aims to improve nutrition at school, home, and restaurants by showcasing innovative school nutrition programs, healthful foods, and cooking techniques.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families
Goal: To teach children and parents how to manage anxiety disorders.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children
Goal: Core Knowledge is based on the idea that for the sake of academic excellence, greater fairness, and higher literacy, elementary and middle schools need a solid, specific, shared core curriculum in order to help children establish strong foundations of knowledge, grade by grade.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment
Goal: The goal of the Cornell Waste Management Institute project was to increase the capacity to compost the tremendous amount of food scraps produced in New York State.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality
Goal: The goals of this promising practice were to identify the transportation-disadvantaged population that lacks nonemergency medical care because of low access to transportation; determine the medical conditions that this population experiences and describe other characteristics of these individuals, including geography; estimate the cost of providing the transportation necessary for this population to obtain medical transportation according to various transportation service needs and trip modes; estimate the healthcare costs and benefits that would result if these individuals obtained transportation to non-emergency medical care for key healthcare conditions prevalent for this population; and compare the relative costs (from transportation and routine healthcare) and benefits (such as improved quality of life and better managed care, leading to less emergency care) to determine the cost-effectiveness of providing transportation for selected conditions.
Impact: These results show that adding relatively small transportation costs do not make a disease-specific, otherwise cost-effective environment non-cost-effective. Providing increased access to non-emergency medical care does improve quality of life and saves money per patient.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The objective of this article is to describe Project Restoration's approach to cross-sector collaboration with a shared population of high utilizing community members, describe the process and outcomes of the collaboration, provide strategies to mitigate challenges that arise during collaboration and offer insights to inform similar initiatives in communities nationwide.
Impact: Hospitals across the region are assessing ways to establish a centralized infrastructure to collaboratively address the complexities of individual cases, as well as a regional council to explore process improvements to enhance the lives of vulnerable populations.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Teens
Goal: Downtown Colled Prep's mission is to prepare underachieving students—who will be the first in their families to go to college—to thrive at four-year universities.