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 / Family Planning, Teens
Goal: The goal of Talking Parents, Healthy Teens is to help parents improve their communication skills with their adolescent children, promote healthy adolescent sexual development, and reduce risky adolescent sexual behaviors.
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.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health, Teens, Urban
Goal: To enable teens from disadvantaged circumstances to develop healthy behaviors, life skills, and a sense of purpose in order to prevent problem behaviors.
Impact: This program equips teens to better develop healthy behaviors and relationships,
develop life and leadership skills, and achieve educational
success.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation
Goal: The State of Arizona's original interest in telecommuting arose out of the search for solutions to common issues facing many areas in the United States: traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption. However, Arizona has found that telecommuting is a powerful management tool that increases employee productivity while reducing the cost of employee turnover.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children
Goal: The purpose of this project is to link Florida’s Title V program (CMS) and local Community Health Centers to:
- Reach and identify uninsured children with special health care needs in Florida and enroll them in insurance
- Focus on underserved communities that traditionally have faced numerous barriers to care, particularly those in the black and Hispanic communities, and children living in rural areas
- Use telemedicine to facilitate enrollment in CMS, care coordination, and access to specialty care
- Work with trusted community elders -- grandmothers -- as lay health partners to facilitate health-related outreach and support to children with special health care needs and their families.
In short, the project seeks to build a sustainable medical home for children with special health care needs in the safety net.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men, Urban
Goal: The goal of this intervention is to reduce high-risk behavior among African American youth as measured by student self-reports of violence, provocative behavior, school delinquency, substance use, and sexual behaviors (intercourse and condom use).
Impact: AAYP reduced rates of risky behaviors among male African American youth.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The program aimed to increase the rate of cervical cancer screening in Chinese women living in North America in response to research findings of significantly lower cervical cancer screening rates in Chinese women.
Impact: This intervention program found that women who received an intervention had cervical cancer screenings at a higher rate than those who did not receive any intervention. This shows that culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions might help improve Pap testing rates among Chinese women.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: The goal of the Crest Cavity-Free Zone Program is to improve the oral health of underprivileged children.
Impact: The educational program was effective in promoting improved oral health in these children over a four-week period.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: Reduce hospital/nursing home readmissions and improve care for older adults.
Impact: Reduced 30-day readmission rate from 18.2 to 8.9 percent over the course of 2 years, resulting in estimated savings of more than $17 million through 1,804 avoided readmissions.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: The mission of the Green House Project is to partner with organizations, advocates, and communities to lead the transformation of institutional long-term care by creating viable homes where elders and others enjoy excellent quality of life and quality of care.
Impact: Studies showed that Green House homes are likely to reduce hospitalization rates among residents, and Medicare and Medicaid costs per resident, when compared to residents in traditional nursing homes. Also, nurses are more likely to spend more hours in Green House homes.