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 Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens
The program’s goal is to provide specialized, remedial education and intensive vocational training to moderate risk youth committed to Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Families
The goal of Baby, Be Safe is to increase the use of child injury prevention measures.
Participants who received tailored educational materials reported greater adoption of home and car safety behaviors than those receiving generic information. This study offers promising findings to help prevent injuries to young children.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Urban
1. Carry out a multi-agency law enforcement (suppression) strategy to reduce gun-related and other violent crimes committed by youths 17 and older.
2. Operate an intensive intervention program to reduce the risk factors for the highest risk youths, their families, and the community.
3. Mobilize the community at the grassroots level to address the problems of hard-to-reach families and the highest risk youths.
4. Operate a long-range prevention program that identifies, links, and strengthens existing resources to serve youths who may be at risk.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
The goal of the Bay Area SCORES program is to reduce obesity, increase physical fitness, and manage cardiovascular health-related risks while improving academic performance in children between the ages of 6 and 12 through soccer, creative expression, service learning, “hip hop for health,” and creative writing.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Urban
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 / Alcohol & Drug Use
The goal of Behavioral Couples Therapy for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse is to improve success rates for treatment of alcoholism and drug abuse by involving intimate partners in the treatment process.
Numerous studies of the program have shown positive outcomes in five areas: substance abuse, quality of relationship with partner, treatment compliance, intimate partner violence, and children's psychosocial functioning. BCT clients also reported more relationship satisfaction than non-participants.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women
The goal of the BetterU intervention is to increase knowledge of heart disease, increase physical activity, and improve nutrition among women aged 25 years and older.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The objectives of Bienestar are to decrease dietary saturated fat intake, increase dietary fiber intake, and increase physical activity among low-income Mexican-American elementary and middle school children.
The Bienestar Health Program statistically significantly increases fitness scores and dietary fiber intakes levels among low-income, Mexican-American fourth-graders. A second randomized control trial conducted from 6th to 8th grade showed reductions in various indexes of adiposity.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens
To significantly reduce depressive symptoms and to reduce the rates of future major depressive disorder onset among adolescents.
The Blues Program has been shown to decrease depressive symptoms, decrease rates of major depression onset, decrease rates of substance use, and increase factors that are protective against depression.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Teens, Women
The Body Project is a dissonance intervention designed to help women in high school and college resist societal and cultural pressures to conform to an idealized notion of what it means to be 'thin' and to help increase body acceptance. A reduction in thin-ideal internalization should result in reduced use of unhealthy weight-control behaviors, decreased eating disorder symptoms, and overall increase in mood and well-being.
The Body Project program has yielded numerous significant benefits at posttest and 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years after program implementation. These include significant reductions in body dissatisfaction, bulimic symptoms and psychosocial impairment compared to control group participants.