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

Promoting Healthy Lifestyles: Alternative Models' Effects (PHLAME) (WA, OR)

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

Goal: The PHLAME Study had four primary goals: (1) Increase physical activity to 30 minutes each day; (2) Reduce percent calories from fat to less than 30%; (3) Increase servings of fruits and vegetables to at least 5 per day; and (4) Improve energy balance and normalize body fat.

Promotores de la Salud de los Niños (King County, WA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Promotores de la Salud de los Niños Program is to use volunteers from the Latino community to locate families in King County that are eligible for services and help families get connected to those services.

Providers And Teens Communicating for Health (PATCH) Program

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens

Goal: PATCH envisions a supportive environment in which all adolescents are able to reach optimal health, safety, and economic security.

MISSION: To improve adolescent health and well being by engaging, educating, and empowering youth and adults as trusted partners in care.

Impact: Health care providers and teens who participate in the PATCH program show significant improvements in knowledge, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions to seek and provide quality sexual health care.

Reach for Health Community Youth Service (New York City, New York)

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

Goal: The goal of the Reach for health Community Youth Service program is to reduce risky sexual behaviors among urban Latino and African American youth.

Impact: Long-term impact has been recorded among participants after two years: this includes delayed initiation of intercourse and reduced frequency of intercourse among sexually active adolescents.

Red Rock Ridge and Valley Trail System (Jefferson County, AL)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Adults, Families

Goal: The Red Rock Ridge & Valley Trail System will be a complete network of bike lanes, sidewalks, and trails connecting communities across Jefferson County.

Impact: The master plan for over 200 miles of shared-use greenways and trails and over 600 miles of street-based bicycle and pedestrian pathways will improve alternative transportation and recreational opportunities.

Reducing Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalizations Through Community Health Workers Integrated Into Primary Care: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Other Conditions

Goal: The goal of this study is to determine how many Community Health Workers (CHW) would be needed to reduce emergency department (ED) visits and associated hospitalizations among their assigned patients to be cost-neutral from a payer's perspective.

Impact: This study adds significant knowledge to the existing literature on CHW programs, and particularly provides critical information to payers that can be used for making decisions on appropriate payment models

Reducing Health Disparities: Diversity and Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Contra Costa (Contra Costa County, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to eliminate health disparities among the diverse patient population in Contra Costa County by improving access to services for people who are not comfortable speaking English, and by increasing the cultural and linguistic competence of staff in order to have a workforce capable of working effectively with diverse patients, clients, customers and communities.

Rideshare-Based Medical Transportation for Medicaid Patients (Philadelphia area, PA)

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

Goal: To evaluate the impact of rideshare-based medical transportation on the proportion of Medicaid patients attending scheduled primary care appointments.

Rochester AIDS Prevention Project (RAPP) (Rochester, NY)

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

Goal: The goals of the program are: 1) to promote abstinence maintenance among sexually abstinent students and encourage safer sex practices to sexually active students, 2) compare the effect of RAPP when taught by different providers, and 3) to explore the factors that impact a student's decision to engage in sexual activity.

Impact: Regular teacher-taught male (p=.001) and female students (p=.05) and peer-taught male students (p=.02) had the highest rates of delaying the onset of sexual activity.

Rural medical-legal partnership and advocacy: a three-year follow-up study. (southern Illinois)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy, Rural

Goal: Medical-legal partnerships perform advocacy services for vulnerable and under-served populations. These populations are typically burdened disproportionately by legal and medical problems. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of a rural medical-legal partnership (MLP).

Impact: The rural medical-legal partnership continued to show social and financial impacts, such as health care recovery dollars (319% return on investment between 2007 and 2009), Social Security benefits, family law services, and end-of-life guidance.

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.