Promising Practices

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Adults, Urban

Goal: The goal of Pathways to Housing, Inc. is to provide independent housing, treatment services for physical and mental health, and employment to mentally ill individuals who are chronically homeless.

Impact: Pathways to Housing has received numerous awards for its projects in New York City, Philadelphia, and D.C. In addition to achieving large effects in terms of housing outcomes, compared with standard care in the community, Housing First also improves community functioning and quality of life.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens

Goal: The long-term goals of the program are to arrest the development of teen antisocial behaviors and drug experimentation. Intermediate goals are to improve parents' family management and communication skills.

Impact: Parents had improved feelings toward their children and were less likely to react negatively to their children's behavior and less likely to take a "lax" approach to their children after participating in the program. They also showed improvements in the skill areas of tracking and reinforcing behavior, setting expectations and defining problems, and remaining calm in stressful situations. Antisocial behaviors in their children decreased significantly, measures of child adjustment showed improvement, and total problem behavior decreased. Furthermore, the PFS intervention resulted in significantly less use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.

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

Goal: The main goals of the program are to prevent adolescent non-users from experimenting with drugs and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users.

Impact: Project Alert participants were 30% less likely than other students to begin using marijuana and analyses showed that the program significantly dampened pro-drug beliefs about cigarette and marijuana use.

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.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve health outcomes for pregnant and postpartum women with substance abuse problems and their infants.

Impact: Improvement in birth weight and gestational age, and reduction in admittance to neonatal intensive care unit and positive infant toxicology screens.

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.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and to decrease violence and weapons-carrying among high school students.

Impact: At 2-year follow-up, students in Project TND schools were about half as likely to use tobacco when compared with students in control schools. Students in Project TND schools were about one-fifth as likely to use hard drugs relative to similar students in control schools.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent or reduce tobacco use among children and adolescents.

Impact: One study found that Project the project reduced initiation of cigarette smoking in the two years following the program by 26% when compared to a control group. Students showed increased knowledge of tobacco addiction, related diseases, and media influences and had improved communication, refusal, and coping skills.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens

Goal: PATCH envisions a supportive environment in which all adolescents are able to reach optimal health, safety, and economic security.

MISSION: To improve adolescent health and well being by engaging, educating, and empowering youth and adults as trusted partners in care.

Impact: Health care providers and teens who participate in the PATCH program show significant improvements in knowledge, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions to seek and provide quality sexual health care.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent and reduce substance use and abuse among high risk, multi-problem adolescents placed in residential child care facilities.

Impact: One evaluation showed that adolescents participating in RSAP showed significant reductions in their use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco from pretest to posttest measures.