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, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: The goal of this program is to teach effective parenting practices in order to promote healthy child adjustment.
Impact: Immediate changes for parents include improved positive parenting practices and reduced family coercion. Benefits to these parenting practices, in turn, have been found to result in reductions in child behavior problems and parental depression.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce child behavior problems and delinquency and substance abuse among adolescents, to improve parenting knowledge and skills, and to strengthen the relationship between adolescent and parent.
Impact: Findings from studies show an association between Parenting Wisely participation and improvements in family problem solving, family roles, family involvement, parenting self-efficacy, parenting sense of competence, and decreased adolescent violent behavior.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: Partners in School Innovation enables public schools in high-poverty Bay Area communities to achieve educational equity through school-based reform.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants
Goal: The goal of this common sense cooperation is to provide a new measure of safety to millions of Americans by implementing prevention programs where legislation or regulation does not exist. The preventative measures are based around optimizing treatment plant performance and thus increasing protection against microbial contamination in America's drinking water supply.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: Pasos Adelante is a lifestyle intervention that aims to prevent and control chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes in Mexican Americans by providing a supporting environment for improving nutrition and increasing walking activity in U.S.-Mexico border communities.
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 / Cancer, Adults, Older Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to increase colorectal cancer screening rates among older primary care patients.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: PAXIS Institute develops, implements, and supports tested and proven solution-focused strategies with real-world outcomes for children and the adults who care for them in partnership with communities to reduce historical disparities and improve lifetime outcomes to create population-level peace, productivity, health, and happiness.
The mission of the PAX Tools for Human Services program is to empower individuals and communities to create a more nurturing environment with universal access to research-based prevention science in order to improve the well-being and lifetime outcomes of people from all walks of life around the world.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce youth violence and aggressive behavior by initiating prevention early in childhood, increasing children's resilience, and reinforcing positive behaviors.
Impact: One evaluation found that there was an 89% decrease in physical aggression and an 82% decrease in verbal aggression for participating students.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Phoenix Healthy Homes project was to use a multi-factorial approach to reduce hazard prevalence and improve self-reports of home safety and respiratory health.
Impact: The Phoenix Healthy Homes project showed that a tailored healthy homes improvement package significantly improves self-reported respiratory health and safety, reduces respiratory health and injury hazards, and can be implemented in concert with a mobile clinical setting.