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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.

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Healthy Families: Palm Beach (Palm Beach County)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of Healthy Families Palm Beach is to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Impact: The Healthy Families program improves birth outcomes, nurtures child development, prevents child abuse and neglect, improves family functioning, and help parents develop more positive beliefs in their parental roles.

Healthy Love (Atlanta, GA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: Healthy Love seeks to provide a safe, culturally tailored intervention for heterosexual black women to reduce their disproportionately high risk of transmitting and contracting HIV and other STDs. Healthy Love aims to encourage sexual abstinence, HIV testing, and receipt of test results; increase women's condom usage during vaginal sex with male partners; and reduce the number of women's sex partners and unprotected anal and vaginal sex with male partners. Healthy Love also seeks to improve HIV/STD knowledge, self-efficacy for using condoms, intentions to use condoms, and attitudes towards condoms.

Impact: Healthy Love increased participants' likelihood of using condoms, being tested for HIV, and receiving their test results. The intervention also reduced participants' self-described actions with male partners that can increase black women's risks for HIV infection.

Healthy Steps for Older Adults (HSOA) (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults

Goal: The Pennsylvania Department of Aging offers this fall risk screening and prevention program to adults 50 years of age and older. The program is designed to raise awareness of falls, introduce steps on how to reduce falls, improve overall health, and provide referrals and resources.

Healthy Steps for Young Children: Palm Beach (Palm Beach, FL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: Improve early identification of concerns and initiate interventions to improve the health, development and emotional wellness of children, newborn to age three.

Impact: HSFYC parents were less likely to use severe discipline (OR: 0.68) and more likely to negotiate with their child (OR: 1.20). HSFYC parents had greater odds of reporting a clinical or borderline concern regarding their child's behavior (OR: 1.35).

Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention: Interactive Digital Interventions for Blood Pressure Self-Management

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends the use of interactive digital interventions to improve blood pressure control in patients with high blood pressure.

Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention: Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring Interventions for Improved Blood Pressure Control When Combined with Additional Support

NewCDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends self-measured blood pressure monitoring interventions combined with additional support to improve blood pressure outcomes in patients with high blood pressure. Additional support may include patient counseling, education, or web-based support. Economic evidence indicates that self-measured blood pressure monitoring interventions are cost-effective when they are used with additional support or within team-based care.

Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention: Tailored Pharmacy-based Interventions to Improve Medication Adherence

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends tailored pharmacy-based adherence interventions for cardiovascular disease prevention. Evidence shows interventions delivered by pharmacists in community and health system pharmacies increased the proportion of patients who reported taking medications as prescribed. The CPSTF also finds these interventions are cost-effective for cardiovascular disease prevention.

HIV/STD Risk Reduction Interventions for African American and Latino Adolescent Girls (Philadelphia)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to reduce self-reported unprotected sexual intercourse among African American and Latino adolescent girls.

Impact: Skill-based HIV/STD interventions can improve condom-use and reduce sexual risk behaviors, along with STD rates, among African American and Latino teen girls in clinical settings.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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