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.

Submit a Promising Practice

Teens on Target (TNT) (Oakland, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: Program goals include educating and training young people from some of the most life-threatening neighborhoods of Oakland to enable them to participate in making their lives, their neighborhoods, and their communities safer and healthier, and educating policy makers, community members, and the media on the impact of violence on youth and violence prevention strategies.

Telehealth Connections for Children and Youth (Florida)

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

Goal: The purpose of this project is to link Florida’s Title V program (CMS) and local Community Health Centers to:

- Reach and identify uninsured children with special health care needs in Florida and enroll them in insurance
- Focus on underserved communities that traditionally have faced numerous barriers to care, particularly those in the black and Hispanic communities, and children living in rural areas
- Use telemedicine to facilitate enrollment in CMS, care coordination, and access to specialty care
- Work with trusted community elders -- grandmothers -- as lay health partners to facilitate health-related outreach and support to children with special health care needs and their families.

In short, the project seeks to build a sustainable medical home for children with special health care needs in the safety net.

Text4Diet: A Text Message-based Intervention for Weight Loss

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

Goal: To facilitate behavior change among overweight adults that leads to sustained weight loss.

Impact: Those who use Text4Diet are exposed to customized advice regarding healthy behavior changes. Participants on average saw an average 6-pound weight loss during a four-month use period. This is a statistically significant difference from weight loss in the usual care comparison group.

The Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition (Bay Area, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Urban

Goal: Goals of the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition include:

- Reduce waste & help meet recycling goals.
- Reduce water use on landscapes by 50% or more.
- Nurture healthy soils while reducing fertilizer use.
- Use integrated pest management to minimize chemical use.
- Prevent or reduce storm water pollution to our local creeks and bay.
- Lower maintenance associated with mowing and shearing.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Create wildlife habitat.

The Buffalo Healthy Communities Initiative (Buffalo, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Transportation

Goal: The goal of this project is to make the streets more pedestrian friendly and supportive of active living.

The Connect Project (USA)

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

Goal: The Connect Project is a community-based youth suicide prevention program that works to develop a shared knowledge and understanding of suicide prevention within a community.

The Developmentally Supportive Care: Newborn Individualized Developmental Care & Assessment Program (Boston, MA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Families

Goal: The goal of NIDCAP is to maximize physical, mental, and emotional growth, health, and other positive outcomes for infants in NICUs.

The Effect of Guided Care Teams on the Use of Health Services

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of this study was to determine the effect of interdisciplinary primary care teams on health care utilization by patients with multiple chronic conditions.

Impact: This study concluded that guided care models can significantly impact home health care episodes.

The Fenway Alliance: Walkability in a Commerical District (Fenway District, Boston, MA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Adults, Families, Urban

Goal: To achieve an improved physical environment, sense of community, and quality of life for members, residents and patrons of the Fenway Cultural District in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Healthy Diabetes Plate (Idaho)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Adults, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Healthy Diabetes Plate was to increase understandability and accessibility of diabetes nutrition education for people living with diabetes.

Impact: The Healthy Diabetes Plate curriculum solves two problems encountered in diabetes education — understandability and accessibility. Participants were able to correctly plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals and improved their intake of fruit and vegetables.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
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:

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.
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.
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.