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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.

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A Matter of Degree (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens

Goal: The goal of the A Matter of Degree program is to reduce student drinking and driving after drinking.

A Text Message-Based Intervention for Weight Loss (San Diego County, CA)

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

Goal: To reduce weight in overweight and obese patients using mobile-based text and multimedia messaging.

Impact: At the end of a 4-month period, participants in the text-message based intervention showed greater weight loss than the control group.

A.I.R. Harlem (Harlem)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To improve the quality of life and academic achievement of asthmatic children, helping families break the revolving cycle of poverty that is worsened by chronic disease.

Impact: A reduction in ER visits by 64%, a reduction in overnight hospitalization by 85% and a reduction in school absences by 69%.

Acquaintance Rape Prevention Program (Athens, OH)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Women

Goal: The goals of this program are to increase awareness of risk factors for sexual assault, provide women with practical strategies to prevent rape, and reduce the incidence of sexual assault among participants.

ACTIVE Louisville’s Healthy Eating Initiative (Louisville, KY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity

Goal: The goal of this program is to promote healthy eating in lower-income areas of Louiville. The initiative is part of a larger program with the goal of redesigning low-income urban neighborhoods to promote active living.

Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE) (Ohio)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Literacy

Goal: The goal of this program is to provide literacy skills and other basic skills to the most educationally and economically disadvantaged individuals in the state.

Advancing Diabetes Self Management (Connecticut)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of the Advancing Diabetes Self Management program at the Community Health Center was to improve the health outcomes of people with type 2 diabetes.

Impact: The diabetes self-management intervention showed patient improvements in glycemic control, blood pressure, and LDL cholesterol. The team was able to develop and adapt the program to meet the unique needs of the population to create an effective intervention.

Adventure Diversion Program (Carroll County, MD)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens

Goal: The goal of the Adventure Diversion Program is to reduce the number of out-of-home placements for juveniles who have violated probation.

Adventures in Learning (Greater Kansas City area)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Adults, Older Adults, Urban

Goal: Shepherd's Center Central is a local leader in the regional effort to ensure that all people can age successfully with dignity, security, and respect.

Impact: In 2016, Adventures in Learning experienced attendance of 80 members per week and offered a total of 520 classes during the four 10-week sessions available.

Al's Pals

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: The goal of the Al's Pals program is to teach children how to practice positive ways to express feelings, relate to others, communicate, brainstorm ideas, solve problems, and differentiate between safe and unsafe substances and situations.

Impact: Studies have shown that the program resulted in higher degrees of positive change in the intervention groups, increases in prosocial behaviors and positive coping behaviors, and decreases in antisocial and negative coping behaviors.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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