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

Health and Wellness Outreach Initiative (Chicago, IL)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults, Urban

Goal: White Crane's health outreach model strives to reduce the incidence of risk factors for preventable disease, to motivate and educate seniors to take control of their health, and to make primary health care services accessible to vulnerable elders.

Healthier Living with Arthritis Online Workshop (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Other Conditions, Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The program is focused on reduction of pain and improvement of function for arthritis patients unable or unwilling to attend small group ASMPs, which have proven effective in changing health-related behaviors and improving health status measures.

Healthier Options for Public Schoolchildren (HOPS) (Osceola)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children

Goal: The goal of the HOPS program was to improve overall health status and academic achievement using replicable strategies.

Impact: The HOPS intervention helped students who qualified for free or reduced price meals both stay within the normal BMI percentile and score higher on their state math achievement test.

Healthy Buddies (Canada)

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

Goal: The goal of Healthy Buddies is to increase health knowledge, health behaviors, and health attitudes in children in elementary school.

Healthy Families New York (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: The goals of HFNY are to promote positive parent-child interaction; to ensure optimal pre-natal care; to promote healthy childhood growth and development; and to enhance family functioning.

Impact: Mothers participating in the HFNY study were significantly less likely to deliver low-birth-weight babies than mothers in the control group (3.3% vs 8.3%). HFNY parents also reported having engaged in significantly fewer acts of serious abuse and neglect.

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.

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.

Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of HELPS Programs is to strengthen students’ reading fluency so they will be better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills, including comprehension.

Impact: HELPS is a supplemental curriculum that improves students reading fluency, a commonly neglected aspect of children's core reading curriculum, in order to help them become successful readers.

Hepatitis B ESL Education Curriculum for Chinese Immigrants (Canada)

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

Goal: To educate the Chinese Canadian immigrant community on Hepatitis B knowledge and to promote Hepatitis B testing through ESL curriculum.

Impact: The Chinese immigrant population in North America has a rate of Hepatitis B infection that is 10 times higher than the general population's rate of approximately 0.5 percent. The Hepatitis B ESL curriculum is effective in increasing knowledge about Hepatitis B among Chinese immigrants in Canada.

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.