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, Environmental Health / Air
-Increase the use of coal fly ash in concrete by 43 percent, from 14 million metric tons per year in 2001 to 20 million metric tons by 2010.
-Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from concrete production by approximately 6 million metric tons by 2010.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Community & Business Resources, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The mission of the Pasadena Community Gardens Conservancy is to improve family health in urban food desert neighborhoods through grants for community gardens and nutrition education.
Pasadena Community Gardens Conservancy partnered with the City of Pasadena to establish the Villa-Parke Community Center, where community members can learn about gardening, cooking, nutrition.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
The goal of the program was to improve the physical and mental well-being of students through practicing yoga.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children
The goal of ABRACADABRA is to build the literacy skills of young children.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Oral Health, Children
The goal of the Baby Bottle Tooth Decay Program is to prevent early childhood caries.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men
The goal of Behavior Management through Adventure is to address the needs of at-risk youth in therapeutic settings.
Behavior Management Through Adventure was successful in lowering rearrest rates, decreasing the time period from release until rearrest, improving depression symptoms, increasing family self-concept, and lowering social introversion.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Families
The goal of BSFT is to improve a youth's behavior problems by improving family interactions that are presumed to be directly related to the child's symptoms, thus reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors for adolescent drug abuse and other conduct problems.
Adolescents who participated in BSFT showed a significantly greater reduction in conduct problems than adolescents in the comparison condition, who received a participatory-learning group intervention. BSFT participants also showed a significantly greater reduction in socialized aggression.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Urban
The Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program's goal is to provide comprehensive youth development services and reduce teen pregnancy among economically disadvantaged teenagers.
Pregnancy prevention programs can work successfully among females when started early in adolescence and when male counterparts are also educated appropriately on condom-use and delayed sexual actively onset.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Poverty, Children, Families
The program's mission is to promote public-private partnerships to ensure that the children of Florida are provided safe, high quality, developmentally appropriate and enriching child care while parents work to remain self-sufficient.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Adults, Older Adults
The goal of this program is to use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression in older adults.
Research has shown that behavioral cognitive therapy helped patients reduce their depression symptoms, and maintained this improvement at 1-year follow-up more effectively than other types of therapy. At 6-month follow-up, clients who completed CBT were less likely to meet criteria for diagnoses of depression than clients who completed treatment as usual.