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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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Harris County Pollution Control Ozone Monitoring (Harris County, TX)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air

Goal: The goal of this program is to increase the amount of reliable air quality data that is available to the public in Harris County.

Home Again: A Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Portland and Multnomah County (Portland and Multnomah County, OR)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to end homelessness in the City of Portland and Multnomah County by 2015. As efforts to end homelessness continue, city and county officials will focus on nine actions. Programs throughout the county will address moving people into Housing First, ending the practice of discharging people into homelessness from jails and hospitals, improving outreach, emphasizing permanent solutions, increasing the housing supply, creating new partnerships, improving the rent assistance system, increasing economic opportunity for homeless people and implementing new data collection technology.

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families

Goal: HIPPY programs empower parents as primary educators of their children in the home and foster parent involvement in school and community life to maximize the chances of successful early school experiences.

Impact: Through 20 years of research, the HIPPY model has proven to be effective in improving school readiness, parent involvement in students' academic lives, school attendance, classroom behavior, and overall academic performance.

Home Vaccination Intervention (Melbourne, Australia)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention is to promote catch-up immunizations for children who are behind the recommended immunization schedule.

Impact: Home vaccination for children behind in their immunization schedule is an effective and relatively cheap method of completing recommended vaccinations, and can be particularly beneficial for disadvantaged families.

Immunization Case Management Intervention (Los Angeles, CA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of this immunization case management intervention is to improve immunization rates among infants of low-income, urban, African American families.

Impact: Immunization case management increased the knowledge of immunization schedules, rate of well-child visits, and up-to-date immunization rate for children of participating families.

Increasing Age-Appropriate Immunization Rates for Children in Butler County and Surrounding Area (Butler County, KS)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Rural

Goal: The goal of this program was to increase immunization rates in the Butler County area.

Impact: Immunization rates increased from 53.2% to 72.4% and parents reported a better understanding of the importance of timely vaccinations.

Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health

Goal: The goal of the IAQ TfS program is to provide schools with easy ways to improve air quality in classrooms.

Marion County Indigent Care Program (Marion County, FL)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve health care accessibility and availability for low income, uninsured and underinsured residents of Marion County.

Miami-Dade County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program (Miami-Dade County, FL)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: The goal of this program is to help protect, restore, and conserve the air, water, land and ecosystem resources of Miami-Dade County.

National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education, Teens

Goal: The mission of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is to intervene in the lives of high-school dropouts and provide them with the values, life skills, education, and self-discipline necessary to succeed.

Impact: The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program resulted in participants succeeding in several aspects of their lives compared to their control group counterparts. Program participants were more likely to have a GED certificate, more likely to have started college, and more likely to be working.

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.