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, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women, Urban
Goal: The overall goal of the Prenatal Plus Program, combined with the Partners for a Healthy Baby curriculum, is to improve birth outcomes, decrease rates of child abuse and neglect, and strengthen families.
Impact: Reduced low birth weight rate through risk reduction during pregnancy.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Older Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goals of this project are:
- to increase knowledge of nutrition among Hispanic elders who are at risk for cardiovascular disease and obesity;
- to foster behavior change through group sessions and interactive activities; and
- to test whether the American Heart Association guidelines and materials can be utilized in a dietitian led model targeted to Hispanic elders.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Families, Urban
Goal: The goals of this program are to detect school adjustment difficulties, prevent social and emotional problems, and enhance learning skills of children in kindergarten through third grade.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The main goals of the program are to prevent adolescent non-users from experimenting with drugs and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users.
Impact: Project Alert participants were 30% less likely than other students to begin using marijuana and analyses showed that the program significantly dampened pro-drug beliefs about cigarette and marijuana use.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The objective of Project HEART (Health Education Awareness Research Team) was to promote behavior changes to decrease cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in a high-risk Hispanic border population.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Wellness & Lifestyle, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goal of Project Joy is to improve cardiovascular lifestyle risk factors among African American women.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goal of Project ORE is to use a friendship-based sexual education intervention to prevent HIV/STI transmission in high-risk urban African American adolescent girls.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of Project SUCCESS is to prevent and reduce substance abuse in high-risk middle-school and high-school aged adolescents.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of Project SUCCESS is to prevent and reduce substance abuse in high-risk middle-school and high-school aged adolescents.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and to decrease violence and weapons-carrying among high school students.
Impact: At 2-year follow-up, students in Project TND schools were about half as likely to use tobacco when compared with students in control schools. Students in Project TND schools were about one-fifth as likely to use hard drugs relative to similar students in control schools.