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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.

Practices that were submitted by local partners are listed first and will have a green box below them that indicates they are local. Users can also use the search features to find promising practices from across the country.

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CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Asthma Control: Home-Based Multi-Trigger, Multicomponent Environmental Interventions (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens

Goal: To improve overall quality of life and productivity for children and adolescents that suffer from asthma.

Impact: Home-based multi-trigger, multi-component interventions with a combination of minor or moderate environmental remediation with an education component provide good value based on improvement in symptoms free days.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Decreasing Tobacco Use Among Workers: Incentives & Competitions to Increase Smoking Cessation (USA)

CDC

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

Impact: Community mobilization integrated with additional interventions (i.e. stronger local laws for retailers) decrease youth tobacco use and access to these products.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Preventing Excessive Alcohol Consumption: Maintaining Limits on Days of Sale (USA)

CDC

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

Impact: In order to prevent excessive alcoholism and related harms, the Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends supporting existing limits on days in which alcoholic beverages may be sold.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Reducing Alcohol-Impaired Driving: Ignition Interlocks (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Adults

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends the use of ignition interlocks for people convicted of alcohol-impaired driving based on evidence that they reduce re-arrest rates while the interlocks are installed.

Public health benefits of ignition interlock interventions are currently limited by the small proportion of offenders who install interlocks in their vehicles. More widespread and sustained use of interlocks among this population could have a greater impact on alcohol-related crashes.

Challenging College Alcohol Abuse (Tucson, AZ)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce the negative impact of alcohol abuse on campus life by correcting students' perceptions about alcohol use and by making the campus less conducive to drinking.

Checkpoints Program (Connecticut)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Teens

Goal: The goal of the Checkpoints Program is to encourage parental limits on teen driving, and decrease risky teen driving.

Impact: The Checkpoints Program increased the rate at which parents placed greater limits on high-risk teen driving conditions and decreased traffic violations among teens.

Chicago Fitness Plus (Chicago, IL)

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

Goal: The overall program goal is the maintenance of a physically active lifestyle, in order to optimize one's functional capacity and ability to perform daily activities. In order to achieve this goal, the following impact objectives were established:

- Enhance enjoyment and participation in a variety of physical activities
- Develop and enhance the skills, knowledge, and self-efficacy needed to
establish and maintain an active lifestyle
- Ensure the affordability and accessibility of the program

Child Advocacy Center (San Francisco, CA)

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

Goal: The goal of the program is to offer comprehensive child abuse prevention and intervention as well as health care services in a single setting.

Child Development-Community Policing Program (New Haven, CT)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Child Development-Community Policing Program (CDCP) is to reduce the negative consequences of exposure to violent and potentially traumatic events among children and their families.

Impact: The CDCP Program shows that through community policing efforts, it is possible to successfully intervene early in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of children's exposure to violence.

Children's National Parish Nursing Program (Washington, D.C.)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal is to increase awareness in faith-based communities regarding preventative care for children and services available at Children's National Medical Center for patients and families.

Impact: The Parish Nursing Program will train eight nurses to become Faith Community Nurses in Summer 2013.

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.
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