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 Good Idea, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens
Goal: The mission is to provide a multi-disciplinary program that prepares students for 21st century careers by giving them community based involvement. The hope of this project is for the students to connect content knowledge, acquired skills, and work habits to real world situations and issues.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Diabetes, Children, Teens, Adults, Rural
Goal: The overall goal is to reduce the prevalence of diabetes and improve the care of people with diabetes.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families
Goal: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative is a regional collaboration dedicated to prevention, early detection, and management of diabetes. The Healthy Family Backpack Program connects with youth and their parents to educate participants on proper nutrition and promote healthy lifestyles to reduce childhood obesity.
Impact: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative has distributed nutritional education materials to over 300 families. Of ninety-two families that set a healthy goal at the start of the program, forty-five continued to maintain that goal at the two-month mark.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Men, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the Nurturing Fathers Program is to teach men parenting and nurturing skills.
Impact: Thousands of fathers have benefited from the Nurturing Fathers Program. The program has been successfully implemented by non-profit organizations as well as federal, state, and municipal government entities.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: The long-term goals of this program are to decrease the rate of recidivism in families receiving social services, lower the rate of multiparent teenage pregnancies, reduce the rate of juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, and stop the intergenerational cycle of child abuse by teaching positive parenting behaviors.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Public Safety, Children, Adults, Families
Goal: To prevent pedestrian deaths and injuries in Oakland, California.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of this program is to foster dialog, negotiation, and problem solving between offenders and victims in Oakland.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Families
Goal: The OMI is a multi-sector effort to reduce the state's divorce rate, strengthen families, and reduce dependency on government support.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / Literacy, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goal of One City One Book: San Francisco Reads is to encourage enjoyment of reading, literacy, and community by having San Franciscans read and discuss the same book at the same time.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
Goal: This program has three goals: (1) to strengthen students' social competency skills in communication, self-control, and interpersonal problem-solving; (2) to promote the creation of growth-fostering relationships among students and between students and the adults in their lives; and (3) to build a sense of community in classrooms and schools by providing a common "language" that fosters communication among students and between students and their teachers and other adults.