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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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Healthy Start

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women

Goal: The initiative's primary purpose was to reduce infant mortality by 50 percent and generally improve maternal and infant health in at-risk communities.

Impact: 20% of the Healthy Start program sites had significantly lower rates of low-birth-weight babies than their comparisons. 20% of the sites also had significantly lower rates of very-low-birth-weight babies than their comparisons. Four of the sites had significantly lower pre-term birth rates.

Healthy Steps for Older Adults (HSOA) (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults

Goal: The Pennsylvania Department of Aging offers this fall risk screening and prevention program to adults 50 years of age and older. The program is designed to raise awareness of falls, introduce steps on how to reduce falls, improve overall health, and provide referrals and resources.

Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of HELPS Programs is to strengthen students’ reading fluency so they will be better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills, including comprehension.

Impact: HELPS is a supplemental curriculum that improves students reading fluency, a commonly neglected aspect of children's core reading curriculum, in order to help them become successful readers.

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.

HomeMeds

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults

Goal: The mission of the program is to shape the evolving health system by developing and spreading high-value models of community-based care and self-management for diverse populations with chronic conditions.

HORIZONS (Atlanta, GA)

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

Goal: The goal of the HORIZONS program is to reduce sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), particularly HIV, by increasing condom use and partner communication about safer sex.

Impact: The HORIZONS program empowered African American female adolescents to pursue safer sex and reduced the number of STDs among those in the program.

I Can Problem Solve (ICPS)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to teach children effective problem-solving skills.

Impact: Studies demonstrated that ICPS participants scored better than the control group on impulsiveness, inhibition, and total behavior problems; showed fewer high-risk behaviors than never-trained controls; showed improvement in positive, prosocial behaviors and decreases in antisocial behaviors; and performed better on standardized achievement tests.

Impact of Community Health Workers on Use of Healthcare Services in the United States: A Systematic Review

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Other Conditions

Goal: The goal of this study was to determine the effect Community Health Worker programs have on healthcare spending.

Impact: The studies show that CHW programs can help reduce emergency department visits and hospital use.

Improving Colorectal Cancer Screening Among the Medically Underserved (Chicago, IL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to increase provider recommendation and patient compliance with colorectal cancer screening at a federally qualified health center serving low-income patients.

Impact: The intervention appears to be a feasible means to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among patients served by community health centers. However, more attention to patient decision making and education may be needed to further increase screening rates.

Increasing the Use of Child Restraints in Motor Vehicles (Dallas, TX)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to increase child restraint use by Hispanic community members.

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.