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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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Early Literacy Skills Builder (ELSB) (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of ELSB is to help moderately to severely disabled children develop the skills and behaviors they need to succeed in a standard reading program.

Impact: ELSB demonstrates that reading skills curriculum adapted to alternative instructional needs of cognitively disabled children can more effectively improve literacy as compared to sight-word-only programs.

Earn-A-Bike Boulder, Colorado (Boulder, CO)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Transportation, Children, Adults, Urban

Goal: The mission of Earn-A-Bike is to educate and advocate the safe use of refurbished bicycles as affordable transportation.

Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less (North Carolina)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity

Goal: To reverse the rising tide of obesity and chronic disease among North Carolinians by helping them to eat smart, move more and achieve a healthy weight.

Impact: ESMMWL teaches healthy lifestyle behaviors surround diet and exercise so that participants may incorporate them into their lives in a sustained manner and sustain weight loss.

Emergency Department Means Restriction Education

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety

Goal: The goal of Emergency Department Means Restriction Education is to help parents and adult caregivers of at-risk youth recognize the importance of taking immediate action to restrict access to firearms, alcohol, and prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the home in order to lessen the risk of self harm.

Impact: The Means Restriction program shows that ED-based programs and provided practical information can help parents and adult caregivers of at-risk youth recognize the importance of taking immediate, new action to restrict access to dangers in the home.

Environmental Improvements Brought by the Legal Interventions in the Homes of Poorly Controlled Inner-City Adult Asthmatic Patients (New York City, New York)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Urban

Goal: The goal is to use a medical-legal collaborative intervention to force landlords into maintaining healthy living conditions for residents with poorly controlled asthma.

Impact: This proof-of concept study exhibits that medical-legal collaboration can significantly impact the control of inner-city asthmatics by improving their domestic environment.

Exercise Training for Stroke Survivors (Chicago, IL)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to use education and exercise improve outcomes for urban African American stroke survivors.

First Step to Success

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children

Goal: The mission of the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior (IVDB) is to empower schools and social service agencies to address violence and destructive behavior, at the point of school entry and beyond, in order to ensure safety and to facilitate the academic achievement and healthy social development of children and youth. The primary goal of this program is to divert antisocial kindergartners from an antisocial behavior pattern during their subsequent school careers and to develop in them the competencies needed to build effective teacher- and peer-related, social-behavioral adjustments.

Fit Kids/Fit Families (Wisconsin)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children

Goal: To improve children's nutritional status, increase their activity level, enhance their self-esteem, and create life-long health habits by using a multidisciplinary, community- and family-based system approach, and by engaging local health care professionals with community agencies.

Impact: The Fit Kids/Fit Families program shows that multidisciplinary, community- and family-based approaches to children's exercise, weight, & nutrition can have an effect on healthier nutritional choices, increased physical activity, decreased sedentary activity, healthier behaviors, and BMI reductions.

FRIENDS Programs

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: The goal of the FRIENDS Programs is to teach cognitive-behavioral skills to reduce anxiety in elementary school students who are or were exposed to violence.

Impact: The FRIENDS Programs and specific studies of them indicate that school-based anxiety prevention programs can increase standardized mathematics achievement scores, decrease life stressors, and reduce victimization by community violence in children.

Girls 2000 (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of Girls 2000 is to provide low-income girls with exposure and experiences to help them overcome obstacles that they may encounter.

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.