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

Home Again: A Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Portland and Multnomah County (Portland and Multnomah County, OR)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to end homelessness in the City of Portland and Multnomah County by 2015. As efforts to end homelessness continue, city and county officials will focus on nine actions. Programs throughout the county will address moving people into Housing First, ending the practice of discharging people into homelessness from jails and hospitals, improving outreach, emphasizing permanent solutions, increasing the housing supply, creating new partnerships, improving the rent assistance system, increasing economic opportunity for homeless people and implementing new data collection technology.

Medicaid Savings Resulted When Community Health Workers Matched Those With Needs To Home And Community Care (Arkansas)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Government Assistance, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce costs by using specially trained community health workers to help connect people with unmet long-term needs and/or those at risk of entering nursing homes to Medicaid home and community-based services.

Impact: Similar interventions may help other localities achieve cost-saving and equitable access to publicly funded long-term care options other than institutional care.

Niagara County Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (Niagara County, NY)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce the impact of lead poisoning and to prevent new cases of lead poisoning among Niagara County children.

Orange County Juvenile Substance Abuse Treatment Court (Orange County, FL)

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

Goal: Florida started the drug court movement by creating the first treatment-based drug court in the nation in 1989. The drug court concept was developed in Dade County (Miami, Florida) stemming from a federal mandate to reduce the inmate population or suffer the loss of federal funding. The Supreme Court of Florida recognized the severity of the situation and directed Judge Herbert Klein to research the problem. Judge Klein determined that a large majority of criminal inmates had been incarcerated because of drug charges and were revolving back through the criminal justice system because of underlying problems of drug addiction. It was decided that the delivery of treatment services needed to be coupled with the criminal justice system and the need for strong judicial leadership and partnerships to bring treatment services and the criminal justice system together.

Third Regional Plan for New York Tri-state Region (New York, NY)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Economic Climate

Goal: The mission of the RPA is to improve the quality of life and the economic competitiveness of the 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region through research, planning, and advocacy.

Alameda County Food Scrap Recycling (Alameda County, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce food waste in order to achieve the ultimate Alameda County goal of a 75% landfill diversion rate by the year 2010.

Buncombe County Project Access (Buncombe County, NC)

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

Goal: The goal of Project Access is to improve access to specialty health care in Buncombe County.

Cany Valley Agape Network Family for Rural Healthy Food Access

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Nutrition & Healthy Eating, Rural

Goal: CVAN is the Kansas conduit for tons of healthy produce from the Catholic Charities Mary Martha Organization--the steward of excess highly perishable high quality foods from a huge Walmart Distribution Center in Oklahoma. As food supplies allow, CVAN distributes to the 100 square mile school district and to share with a networked family of pantries and volunteer organizations in five Kansas counties and South Coffeyville, OK. As needed, CVAN has recruited distribution volunteers in covering communities within this economically depressed region. The network family was built upon the CVAN’s supply of fresh produce, but is now blessing this area with distribution of CARES foods during the COVID crisis. Its volunteers are food warriors--winning in the fight against rural hunger.

CDC Communities Putting Prevention to Work: King County, WA (King County, WA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens

Goal: The King County Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative goals are to reduce obesity and tobacco use.

Impact: Communities Putting Prevention to Work in King County is associated with reducing obesity prevalence among students in participating school districts and has made substantial progress towards decreasing tobacco use.

Chatham County Jail Health Information Exchange

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders

Goal: To have an EMR system that allows medical professionals to correctly diagnose and address the medical needs of incarcerated patients in the emergency room or in the prison system.

Impact: The program has allowed for greater accessibility and sharing of medical data.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
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:

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.
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.
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.