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, Health / Cancer, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
To mobilize African American communities, public and community-based organizations and optimize resources to eliminate the disparity in breast and cervical cancer morbidity and mortality between African American and Caucasian women.
Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Weather & Climate
The program aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming on college campuses.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Adults, Urban
The goal of the Assisted Competitive Employment Project is to assist individuals who have been diagnosed with a mental disorder in obtaining and maintaining employment.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases
When implemented in schools in low-income or minority communities, interventions are likely to promote health equity.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Family Planning, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The goals of this intervention include: increasing information and skills to make sound choices, increasing abstinence, and eliminating or reducing sex risk behaviors.
Among teens who participated, there was a decrease in sexual activity compared to those who did not participate in the program. Also among participants, there was an increase in sexual intercourse occasions that were condom-protected.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens
To significantly reduce depressive symptoms and to reduce the rates of future major depressive disorder onset among adolescents.
The Blues Program has been shown to decrease depressive symptoms, decrease rates of major depression onset, decrease rates of substance use, and increase factors that are protective against depression.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Teens, Women
The Body Project is a dissonance intervention designed to help women in high school and college resist societal and cultural pressures to conform to an idealized notion of what it means to be 'thin' and to help increase body acceptance. A reduction in thin-ideal internalization should result in reduced use of unhealthy weight-control behaviors, decreased eating disorder symptoms, and overall increase in mood and well-being.
The Body Project program has yielded numerous significant benefits at posttest and 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years after program implementation. These include significant reductions in body dissatisfaction, bulimic symptoms and psychosocial impairment compared to control group participants.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality
The goal of Project Access is to improve access to specialty health care in Buncombe County.
Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Employment, Teens
The goal of the California Green Corps is to place 1,000 at-risk young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 into "green" jobs in order to stimulate the economy and provide opportunities for disadvantaged youth while improving and protecting the environment.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Respiratory Diseases
Effective asthma control can improve quality of life, reduce medical costs, and reduce the number of asthma-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations, school and work days missed, days of restricted activity, and deaths each year.