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 / Adolescent Health, Teens
Goal: The goal of Assisting in Rehabilitating Kids (ARK) is to increase abstinence and safer sex behaviors among substance-dependent adolescents.
Impact: The ARK program successfully increased sexual abstinence among those who received all components: health information, behavior skills training, and risk-sensitization manipulation, with the inclusion of the latter being more resistant to decay over time.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Families
Goal: To increase utilization of asthma management plans and improve quality of life while reducing environmental triggers of asthma in the household and hospitalizations due to asthma among children.
Impact: Short-term community-based asthma outreach workers for children can be effective in enhancing self-management capabilities, improving the quality of life, increasing the use of asthma management plans, and helping families reduce asthma triggers at home.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases
Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends school-based asthma self-management interventions to reduce hospitalizations and emergency room visits among children and adolescents with asthma. Evidence shows interventions are effective when delivered by trained school staff, nurses, and health educators in elementary, middle, and high schools serving diverse populations.
When implemented in schools in low-income or minority communities, interventions are likely to promote health equity.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens
Goal: The mission of the ATHENA (Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise & Nutrition Alternatives) program is to promote healthy sports nutrition and discourage the use of body-enhancing substances among middle and high school female athletes.
Impact: Participation in the ATHENA program results in significant reductions in the use of performance-enhancing substances, recreational drugs, diet pills, tobacco, and alcohol among female teen athletes. Healthier eating and other health behaviors, and body image perceptions were also improved.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Adults, Families, Urban
Goal: Atlanta Streets Alive seeks to shift the current car-centric dynamic and replace it with a proactive community that comes together on a regular basis to participate in active transportation, physical activity, cultural and artistic endeavors, and to enjoy our neighborhoods and communities from a different perspective-from the street.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children
Goal: Through a 2- to 3-year process, ARC is designed to improve organizational culture and climate, increase job satisfaction and commitment, support the adoption and success of evidence-based practices (EBPs), reduce staff turnover, and improve clients’ outcomes.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Investment & Personal Finance, Urban
Goal: ABP accounts were designed to offer a safe, convenient, and inexpensive alternative to check-cashing and other high-cost alternative financial services.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children
Goal: The Be a Star program was developed to help preadolescents gain the knowledge and skills necessary to resist drugs.
Impact: During the third year of the evaluation, very strong differences emerged between intervention and control groups. The treatment groups scored significantly higher on the scales rating family bonding, pro-social behavior, self-concept, self-control, decision-making, emotional awareness, assertiveness, cooperation, attitudes toward drugs and alcohol, self-efficacy, attitudes toward African-American culture, and school bonding.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Urban
Goal: The curricula aim to increase participants' knowledge about the risks of various behaviors and educate participants on how condoms and/or abstinence can effectively be used to lower those risks.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men
Goal: The goal of Behavior Management through Adventure is to address the needs of at-risk youth in therapeutic settings.
Impact: Behavior Management Through Adventure was successful in lowering rearrest rates, decreasing the time period from release until rearrest, improving depression symptoms, increasing family self-concept, and lowering social introversion.