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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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Saving Lives (Massachusetts)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety

Goal: The goal of this program was to improve transportation safety in Massachusetts.

Impact: The Saving Lives Program successfully reduced drunk driving by 42% and speeding-related crashes by 25% through community-based, innovative, and cost-effective interventions.

Sea Lion Club (Germany)

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

Goal: The goal of this program was to lower the Body Mass Index (BMI) of obese children, and thus decrease the prevalence of obesity, through a multi-faceted lifestyle intervention program.

Impact: Group based interventions are beneficial in reducing BMI and creating healthy lifestyles in young, obese individuals.

Seeking Safety

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to help clients move beyond trauma and substance abuse.

Impact: Multiple evaluations of the Seeking Safety program in various settings have shown positive outcomes for substance abuse/addiction, substance abuse disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Senior Health and Resource Eligibility System (SHARES) (Florida)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: Both local and state governments face huge challenges in providing senior populations access to public, agency, professional and family caregivers, and community services that allow seniors to remain independent. The complex maze of constantly changing program and service eligibility rules challenge even the most knowledgeable senior service providers. Fragmentation within senior service agencies further results in duplication of services, unnecessary waiting lists, and caregiver and volunteer burnout. This resource attempts to address those problems by providing quick and easy access to a variety of programs.

Smart Growth (Maryland)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: Smart Growth has three straightforward goals:
- to save our most valuable remaining natural resources before they are forever lost,
- to support existing communities and neighborhoods by targeting state resources to support development in areas where the infrastructure is already in place or planned to support it, and
- to save taxpayers millions of dollars in the unnecessary cost of building the infrastructure required to support sprawl.

SMARTteam (Students Managing Anger and Resolution Together)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to teach conflict-resolution skills to middle-school students.

Impact: Studies showed a statistically significant increase in students' awareness of how their own behaviors contribute to the escalation of a conflict situation for students participating in SMARTteam when compared with the control group not receiving the intervention. Students in the intervention group were also less likely to value violence as an option in conflict situations than their peers in the control group.

Smile Programs... the mobile dentists (USA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Oral Health, Children, Families

Goal: The Smile Programs... the mobile dentists mission is to bring state-of-the-art, dental care to those students in need in the most comfortable and effective way possible.

Impact: Smile Programs provides mobile dental care to children in schools in over a dozen states.

Spark (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: Spark's mission is to provide life-changing apprenticeships to youth in underserved communities across the United States.

SPORT

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens

Goal: To reduce substance abuse and motivate positive behaviors including physical activity in adolescents age 13-17.

Impact: SPORT integrates content targeting alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention with promotion of physical activity and other health enhancing habits in adolescents.

Stepping Up To Health (Michigan)

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

Goal: To determine whether online peer support will increase adherence to an Internet-based pedometer walking program.

Impact: Stepping up to Health shows that online communities can help reduce attrition within online health behavior change interventions.

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.