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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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Women to Women

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women, Rural

Goal: Women to Women aims to provide social support for chronically ill rural women to positively affect social support, self-esteem, empowerment, self-efficacy in order to decrease stress, depression, and loneliness to improve one’s adaptation to living with a chronic disease.

The overall goal of WTW is to use technology to enhance the potential for rural women to more successfully adapt to their chronic illnesses through computer-based support and education research by providing support groups and health education via the Internet.

Impact: The WTW project shows that computer-based interventions can result in improved self-esteem, social support, and empowerment among rural women with chronic illness.

Worcester Goods for Guns Buyback (G4G) Program (Worcester, MA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Children, Teens, Adults, Families, Urban

Goal: The goals of this program are three-fold: first, to remove unwanted improperly stored guns from homes; second, to educate the community about the increased risk of gun-related injuries in the home and the importance of safe gun storage; and third, to identify individuals possessing improperly stored guns at home and provide them with safety information and alternatives.

Impact: This program shows a strong collaboration between health care providers and public safety offices and showcases a low-cost means of removing unwanted firearms from the community. Additionally, most participants felt their homes were safer after turning in their firearm(s).

Workplace Implementation of Act in Time (Montana)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults

Goal: The goal of the Act in Time campaign is to increase awareness to the signs and symptoms of heart attack and the need to call 911 for emergency medical services.

Zero Suicide Initiative (Michigan)

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

Goal: The Zero Suicide Initiative is a comprehensive model of suicide prevention that challenges health and behavioral health care systems to strive for zero suicides among those in their care.

826 National (Chapters in CA, NY, IL, WA, MI, MA, DC)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: The mission of 826 National is to help children ages 6-18 develop their writing skills, and to help teachers get their students excited about writing. The mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

A Living Laboratory: The City of Chattanooga, USA (Chattanooga, TN)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: Chattanooga's vision is to become a city where ecological initiatives generate a strong economic base, nurture social institutions and enhance the natural and made environment.

A Matter of Degree (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens

Goal: The goal of the A Matter of Degree program is to reduce student drinking and driving after drinking.

A Text Message-Based Intervention for Weight Loss (San Diego County, CA)

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

Goal: To reduce weight in overweight and obese patients using mobile-based text and multimedia messaging.

Impact: At the end of a 4-month period, participants in the text-message based intervention showed greater weight loss than the control group.

Abriendo Puertas / Opening Doors Network (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: Abriendo Puertas, developed for and by Latino parents, aims to increase the number of Latino children in the United States that enter school ready to learn and be able to succeed in life by building the capacity and confidence of parents to be strong advocates in the lives of their children.

Accelerated Benefits (AB) Demonstration (USA)

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

Goal: The program's goal was to eliminate the waiting period for access to health care benefits for newly entitled SSDI beneficiaries, and see if this investment has long-term benefits.

Impact: The AB Demonstration project successfully increased the use of health care services and reduced the reported unmet health care needs of participants in the program.

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.