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

School Based Mentoring Program: Palm Beach (Palm Beach and Martin, FL)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Adults

Goal: The goal of the program is to make a positive difference in the lives of children, primarily through professionally guided one-to-one relationships with caring adults, and to assist them in achieving their highest potential, as they grow to become confident, competent and caring individuals.

Southwest Indiana Project AWARE (Vanderburgh County and Warrick County, Indiana)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Urban

Goal: The Goals of Project Aware include:

1) Increase capacity of adults to respond to behavioral health issues of adolescents
2) Increase the mental health literacy of youth-interacting adults
3) Link adolescents with behavioral health issues to mental, emotional, and behavioral health assistance and services
4) Increase the number of collaborative partnerships with youth- serving community agencies/programs
5) Conduct outreach and engagement strategies with adolescents and their families/caregivers to increase awareness of and promote positive behavioral health

Impact: Collaboration and partnerships can help drive awareness of mental health issues and training adolescents in Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) can help spread awareness of mental health resources and referrals to professionals.

Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success (Kansas City)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: Kansas’s Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success (Step It Up) Project aims to work towards making improvements to policies and practices in child care programs with regard to breastfeeding, child nutrition, physical activity, outdoor learning, and reductions in screen time. Step It Up is an extension of the National Early Care and Education Learning Collaboratives Project (ECELC) and uses a similar learning collaborative model.

Impact: Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success has made great improvements in promoting healthy eating and physical activity. The topics of Child Nutrition and Infant & Child Physical Activity had the highest number of increases in best practices. Breastfeeding & Infant Feeding had the highest percentage of best practices being met at pre-assessment (55%).

Targeted Outreach for Women Act (Florida)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Women's Health, Women

Goal: The goal of the Targeted Outreach for Pregnant Women Act is to improve prenatal care among high risk and HIV-positive pregnant women in order to reduce the number of babies born with HIV-infection and prenatal drug exposure.

The Healthy Diabetes Plate (Idaho)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Adults, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Healthy Diabetes Plate was to increase understandability and accessibility of diabetes nutrition education for people living with diabetes.

Impact: The Healthy Diabetes Plate curriculum solves two problems encountered in diabetes education — understandability and accessibility. Participants were able to correctly plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals and improved their intake of fruit and vegetables.

The Perfect 10 Project (Kansas)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Families, Rural

Goal: The Perfect 10 Project objective is to increase the initiation rates of breastfeeding to 84%, increase our duration rates of breastfeeding by 25% at 6 months to 35.8% (currently 28.6%), and 32.6% at one year (currently 18.1%).

Impact: There were 102 physician referrals from the Lower 8 counties for breastfeeding assistance in the first six months of 2016, 148 breastfeeding moms were helped through our after-hours hotline in the first six months, and 24 moms attended our Mommy & Me breastfeeding support group.

The Southern Maryland Tri-County Community Action Committee, Inc. (SMTCCAC) (Maryland)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes

Goal: The mission of this organization is to provide services for eligible citizens that alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty, promote upward mobility, and enrich the quality of life.

THINK Together (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: THINK together's mission is to provide high quality academically-oriented out-of-school programs for students regardless of race, creed, or socioeconomic status.

Triple P - Positive Parenting Program (South Carolina)

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

Goal: Triple P aims to prevent maltreatment and behavioral, emotional and developmental problems in children by strenghtening the knowledge, skills and confidence of parents.

Impact: The program found a 25-35% reduction in child maltreatment, child maltreatment related hospitalizations and injuries, and foster home placements of children for young children at two-year followup of the program.

Aim High (San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, San Mateo counties)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The mission of Aim High is to inspire a life-long love of learning and instill a sense of community, opportunity, and respect so that students are prepared for success in school and life.

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.