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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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Peers Reaching Out and Modeling Intervention Strategies (PROMISE) (Texas, Colorado, California, New York, Washington)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban

Goal: The goal of Community PROMISE is to encourage HIV prevention practices.

Impact: PROMISE leads to significant community-wide progress toward consistent HIV risk reduction.

Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) is to improve nutrition, increase physical activity, and reduce obesity in preschool, elementary, and middle school aged children.

Impact: CATCH is successful in improving participants' diet and physical activity, and the results lasted three years after participation.

Mailed Psychoeducational Intervention for Colorectal Cancer Screening (England)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among older adults.

Impact: Participants in the intervention group had significantly higher colorectal cancer screening attendance, as well as having more positive attitudes about screening and placing a higher priority on screening.

Safer Choices (California, Texas)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Family Planning, Teens

Goal: The goal of the Safer Choices program is to reduce the number of students engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse.

Impact: The program reduced the frequency of intercourse without a condom, reduced the number of sexual partners with whom students had intercourse without a condom, and increased use of condoms and other protection against pregnancy at last intercourse.

Coalition for Community Schools (USA)

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

Goal: Coalition for Community Schools’ mission is to mobilize the resources and capacity of multiple sectors and institutions to create a united movement for community schools.

Family Matters (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent tobacco and alcohol abuse among adolescents.

Teen Talk (California and Texas)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Family Planning, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to educate adolescents about teen pregnancy, abstinence, and contraceptive.

Birth and Beyond California Program (California)

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

Goal: The goal of Birth and Beyond California is to provide effective, evidence-based breastfeeding support to all mothers delivering babies in hospitals in California in order to increase the percentage of mothers who are able to breastfeed exclusively starting at birth.

California Childcare Healthline (San Francisco Bay Area)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: The goals of this program are to promote and maintain the broadest understanding of health and wellness in early childhood settings and to create linkages and promote collaboration between health and safety professionals and child care professionals.

Families Learning and Growing (F.L.A.G.ship) (Marin)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Literacy, Families

Goal: The program's goal is to provide school readiness activities for families with children, from birth to five years old, who live in isolated and under-served areas of Marin County.

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.