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, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: Launched in the fall of 2002, the plan, Moving Our Children Toward a Healthy Weight: Finding the Will and the Way, calls for a multilevel approach to reducing the number of overweight and obese children. It focuses not only on behavioral and interpersonal change, but also on the organizational, community, and societal changes necessary to support healthy eating habits and increased physical activity for children, teens, and their families.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: To make Nashville a healthier community by improving access to fresh fruits and vegetables in food desert neighborhoods while supporting local farmers and empowering and educating youth.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: To promote water safety in the Latino community.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children
Goal: The primary goal of this clinic is to make immunizations more available to parents in an area where children have been identified as lacking needed immunizations.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The objectives of Bienestar are to decrease dietary saturated fat intake, increase dietary fiber intake, and increase physical activity among low-income Mexican-American elementary and middle school children.
Impact: The Bienestar Health Program statistically significantly increases fitness scores and dietary fiber intakes levels among low-income, Mexican-American fourth-graders. A second randomized control trial conducted from 6th to 8th grade showed reductions in various indexes of adiposity.
Filed under Good Idea, Art & Recreation, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the paper is to introduce effective practices for building a summer learning program that reaches the neediest kids, gets kids learning, and keeps going strong.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
Goal: The goal of the Caring School Community program is to build classroom and school communities in order to support learning, academic success, positive relationships and character formation.
Impact: After 3 years, CSC students, relative to their comparison school counterparts, showed a greater sense of the school as a caring community, more fondness for school, stronger academic motivation, more frequent reading of books outside of school, a higher sense of efficacy, stronger commitment to democratic values, better conflict-resolution skills, more concern for others, more frequent altruistic behavior, and less use of alcohol.
CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Adolescent Health: Person-to-Person Interventions to Improve Caregivers' Parenting Skills (USA)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Families
Goal: To modify adolescents' risk and protective behaviors by improving their caregivers' parenting skills based on sufficient evidence of effectiveness in reducing adolescent risk behaviors.
Impact: Although the estimated effects varied substantially and were not statistically significant, risk behaviors decreased and youth participants reported increased refusal skills and self efficacy for avoiding risky behaviors in the future.
CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Asthma Control: Home-Based Multi-Trigger, Multicomponent Environmental Interventions (USA)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens
Goal: To improve overall quality of life and productivity for children and adolescents that suffer from asthma.
Impact: Home-based multi-trigger, multi-component interventions with a combination of minor or moderate environmental remediation with an education component provide good value based on improvement in symptoms free days.
CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Cancer Prevention & Control, Client-Oriented Screening Interventions: Reducing Out-of-Pocket Costs: Breast Cancer (USA)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults, Women
Goal: The goal of the interventions is to reduce client out-of-pocket costs to minimize or remove economic barriers that make it difficult for clients to access cancer screening services.
Impact: Costs can be reduced through a variety of approaches, including vouchers, reimbursements, reduction in co-pays, or adjustments in federal or state insurance coverage. Efforts to reduce client costs may be combined with client education, information about programs, or measures to reduce barriers.