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, Health / Physical Activity, Teens, Women
Goal: 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.
Impact: 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.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of Brainfood is to engage young people in healthy, creative cooking activities to build life skills and promote healthy living.
CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Promoting Health Equity, Education Programs and Policies: Full-Day Kindergarten (USA)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: Children in low-income families often experience delays in language and other development by the age of three. Compensating for these delays before children begin regular schooling can be critical to providing them with equal opportunities for lifelong employment, income, and health.
Impact: Outcomes included self-confidence, ability to work or play with others, independence, and school attendance by the end of kindergarten or the beginning of first grade.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Civic Engagement, Teens
Goal: To provide youth and their communities with experiential workshops and programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth and full expression.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Urban
Goal: The goal of CAN DO Houston is to prevent childhood obesity in the Houston area by facilitating programs that encourage good nutrition, physical activity, and healthy minds.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Families
Goal: The goal of this program is to provide information about mood disorders to parents, equip parents with skills they need to communicate this information to their children, and open dialogue in families about the effects of parental depression.
Impact: Parents in the program scored better in their reports of child-related behavior and attitude changes of parental illness than parents who received a group-format presentation. Children in the program scored higher on measures of improved understanding of parental mood disorder than children who received a group-format lecture.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Teens
Goal: College Track's goal is to transform low-income communities into places where college readiness and college graduation are the norms by providing direct service, community partnerships, and advocacy.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: This initiative strives to alleviate nursing shortages in underserved areas.
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.