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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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North Carolina Graduation Project (North Carolina)

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.

Northern Manhattan Start Right Coalition (New York City, NY)

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

Goal: The goal of the Northern Manhattan Start Right Coalition is to increase the timely vaccination coverage rate for the 4:3:1:3:3 series for children ages 19 to 35 months.

Impact: The Start Right Coalition increased timely vaccination coverage from 63.0% in 2002 to 96.8% in 2007.

Pool Cool (MA, HI)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Children, Families

Goal: The main objective of Pool Cool is to increase awareness, motivation, and sun protection practices among children ages 5-10 who take swimming lessons.

Impact: The Pool Cool program had significant positive effects on children's use of sunscreen and overall sun-protection habits at swimming pools.

Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: PACE provides comprehensive medical and social services to certain frail, elderly people (participants) still living in the community. Most of the participants who are in PACE are dually eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.

Impact: Key research findings demonstrate PACE effectiveness in delivering gold-standard care for older adults and its approach can be a model for others looking to improve the health care system.

Project PREVENT (Massachusetts and North Carolina)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults

Goal: The goal of Project PREVENT is to reduce behavioral risk factors for colorectal cancer among individuals with positive screenings.

Impact: A significantly greater proportion of Project PREVENT participants reduced their multiple risk factor score when compared to the control group (47% vs. 35%). Intervention participants also had significantly greater multivitamin intake and significantly reduced red meat consumption.

Purple Songs Can Fly (Houston)

Filed under Good Idea, Art & Recreation / Music, Children

Goal: The program aims to provide an outlet for inpatient pediatric cancer patients to express their emotions through composing and performing music.

Reach for Health Community Youth Service (New York City, New York)

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

Goal: The goal of the Reach for health Community Youth Service program is to reduce risky sexual behaviors among urban Latino and African American youth.

Impact: Long-term impact has been recorded among participants after two years: this includes delayed initiation of intercourse and reduced frequency of intercourse among sexually active adolescents.

SAHARA: A computer-based HIV intervention (Atlanta, GA)

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

Goal: SAHARA is a computer-based HIV intervention that targets African American women to promote healthy sexual behaviors to reduce the risk of HIV transmission.

Impact: These findings which demonstrate major improvements in HIV-preventive behaviors suggest that SAHARA is an effective evidence-based promising practice; it is inexpensive and only requires two hours.

Salem County School-to-Careers Initiative (Salem County, NJ)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Children, Rural

Goal: The goal of this program is to help at-risk youth and young adults to finish high school, take college-level classes, and have structured work experiences that will lead to successful transitions to adulthood.

Social work-based transitional care intervention for super utilizers of medical care

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Intervention Data, Urban

Goal: The goal of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a social work intervention aimed to address the medical and social needs of inpatient super-utilizers.

Impact: This intervention was modeled after the "Bridge Model" by intensifying patient engagement with an average of 40 patient contacts over 6 months following an index admission. This intervention has the potential to reduce health services utilization and cost among inpatient super utilizers.

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.