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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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A Living Laboratory: The City of Chattanooga, USA (Chattanooga, TN)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: Chattanooga's vision is to become a city where ecological initiatives generate a strong economic base, nurture social institutions and enhance the natural and made environment.

A Text Message-Based Intervention for Weight Loss (San Diego County, CA)

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

Goal: To reduce weight in overweight and obese patients using mobile-based text and multimedia messaging.

Impact: At the end of a 4-month period, participants in the text-message based intervention showed greater weight loss than the control group.

Abriendo Puertas / Opening Doors Network (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: Abriendo Puertas, developed for and by Latino parents, aims to increase the number of Latino children in the United States that enter school ready to learn and be able to succeed in life by building the capacity and confidence of parents to be strong advocates in the lives of their children.

ACCESS (Appropriate Clinical Care Engaged in a School Setting)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens, Families, Rural

Goal: The goal of the ACCESS program is to reduce barriers to mental/behavioral health and wellbeing for children in Belton by providing quality care through free school-based therapy services (provided by licensed therapists, using evidence based practices) for our BSD students and educate our community about mental health and wellbeing to reduce stigma.

Access to Transportation and Health Care Visits for Medicaid Enrollees With Diabetes

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

Goal: The goal of the study was to evaluate the association between Medicaid‐provided nonemergency medical transportation and diabetes care visits.

Impact: The findings of this study underscore the importance of ensuring transportation to Medicaid populations with diabetes, particularly in the rural areas where the prevalence of diabetes and complications are higher and the availability of medical resources lower than in the urban areas.

AccessHealth Spartanburg (Spartanburg County, SC)

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

Goal: AccessHealth Spartanburg's mission is to improve access to healthcare for the uninsured of Spartanburg County, SC.

Impact: AHS reduced inappropriate emergency room use and inpatient caseloads while increasing access to healthcare services for its clients in Spartanburg County. Furthermore, the organization reported a $17 to $1 ROI.

Active Choices (San Francisco)

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

Goal: The goal of this promising practice is to increase physical activity in a diverse older adult population.

Impact: Participants in the Active Choices program showed significant increases in physical activity and a greater satisfaction with their body appearance and function. Participants of the program also showed decreases in their BMI.

Assessment and Referral (Kansas City, MO)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of Assessment and Referral is to help individuals struggling with a substance use disorder evaluate their needs and strengths and begin to make healthy choices that improve the overall quality of their lives.

Impact: First Call provided over 1,700 assessments in 2013, and more than half of clients showed improvements in their Addiction Severity Index (ASI) scores or a decrease in substance use.

Assisted Care/Aftercare (San Francisco, CA )

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Urban

Goal: To provide HIV positive youth aged 18 to 24 with stable housing situations and access to adequate medical services.

Avenues to Independence (ATI) (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To provide shelter to homeless and at-risk young adults aged 18-24 as well as assistance to secure stable and independent living situations.

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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