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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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(2014 results)

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CommuteShare (Burlington, VT)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation

Goal: The goal of this program is to provide affordable, reliable, and flexible transportation to low-income residents of Burlington.

Compassionate Healthcare (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Urban

Goal: Compassionate Healthcare seeks to provide affordable, accessible, and quality healthcare to the homeless and poor, offering a full range of traditional health care services, as well as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, mental health, substance abuse, and non-Western medicine services.

Complex Care Program (Washington, D.C.)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families

Goal: CCP aims to provide ongoing comprehensive care coordination to children with medically complex, chronic conditions within Children's National health care system.

Comprehensive Approaches to Raising Education Standards (CARES) (California)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Adults

Goal: The program's mission is to improve the quality of early learning programs by focusing on increasing the quality, effectiveness, and retention of early educators.

Comprehensive Diabetes Lower Extremity Amputation Prevention Program (Louisiana)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Rural

Goal: The goal of the Comprehensive Diabetes – Lower Extremities Amputation Prevention initiative is to improve foot care and reduce lower extremity amputations among people with diabetes.

Comprehensive Gang Model

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce gang violence.

Comprehensive Homeless Access to Nontraditional Clinical Experiences (CHANCE) (Syracuse, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Urban

Goal: The goal of CHANCE is to facilitate a connection between mental health services and homeless individuals.

Congenital Heart Disease Screening Program (Washington, D.C.)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families

Goal: The Congenital Heart Disease Screening Program values early diagnosis of Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) with a goal of making screening for CHD a standard practice for all newborns.

Impact: The physicians at Children's National in the National Heart Institute created a toolkit that nurseries may use to start a screening program to improve detection of serious CHD.

Connecticut's Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (Connecticut)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Cancer, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of this program is to use peer communication to improve access to potentially lifesaving early detection services.

Connecting Activities (Massachusetts)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Employment, Children

Goal: The goal of this program is to give students the academic, technical/technological and employability skills necessary to compete in higher education and high performance workplaces.

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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