Home > Promising Practices

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

Search Filters Clear all
(2343 results)

Save a link to this search

Ranking
Featured
Primary Target Audience
Topics and Subtopics
Geographic Type
Search

Cooks for Kids (Mississippi)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families

Goal: Cook for Kids aims to improve nutrition at school, home, and restaurants by showcasing innovative school nutrition programs, healthful foods, and cooking techniques.

Crosstown 116: Bringing Habitat II Home (San Francisco)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Economic Climate

Goal: The goal of Crosstown 116 was to foster participatory planning, sustainability, gender equity, increased awareness, and housing alternatives.

Design for the Environment (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: The goal of DfE is to facilitate the identification, adoption and innovation of clean products, processes, technologies, and management systems.

Diabetes Self Management Education (Brinkley, AR)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Diabetes, Rural

Goal: Please define your project/intervention goals:

The goals of this project are:
-to promote individual control of diabetes.
-to help patients become partners with their healthcare providers in the care of their disease.
-to help diabetes patients realize that small continous changes do make big differences.

Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP) (Cedar, Iowa, Johnson, and Washington Counties, IA)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Children, Women, Men, Families

Goal: The mission of the Domestic Violence Intervention Program is to end domestic violence through support, advocacy, shelter and education.

Door-to-Door Van Service for Outpatient Services (Aliquippa, PA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Older Adults

Goal: To increase attendance rates and decrease transportation-related barriers to outpatient PT clinic patients.

Impact: When patients were offered a van service, attendance rates increased at the physical therapy clinic.

Doors to Discovery (USA)

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

Goal: The Doors to Discovery curriculum builds a foundation for literacy by focusing on children's vocabulary and expressive and receptive language skills.

Drive Clean Across Texas (Texas)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air

Goal: The goal of this program is to inspire changes in driving behavior that will help clean up the air in Texas.

Eat Well! El Paso (El Paso, TX)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families

Goal: The main purpose of the Eat Well! El Paso program is to improve the local food environment by expanding healthy food options for children and their families, as well as to increase awareness and knowledge of the positive effects that healthy food choices can have on our health and our community.

Impact: Many locally-owned restaurants in El Paso have worked with the Eat Well! El Paso program to improve the healthy meal choices on their menus, helping to create a healthier food environment for the community.

Effect of a housing and case management program on emergency department visits and hospitalizations among chronically ill homeless adults: a randomized trial (Chicago, Illinois)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: To assess the effectiveness of a case management and housing program in reducing the use of urgent medical services among homeless adults with chronic medical illnesses.

Impact: For every 100 homeless adults offered the intervention, the expected benefits over the next year would be 49 fewer hospitalizations, 270 fewer hospital days, and 116 fewer ED visits.

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.
Santa Cruz