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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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Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Governance, Children, Teens, Adults, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the pilot was to assess the impact on health care use of addressing patients’ civil legal problems – the social, financial, or environmental problems that require assistance from lawyers to remedy. The lawyer was embedded in the health care team and present during case management discussions to identify specific civil legal problems and to help the team better understand how to address them. Additionally, this partnership provided civil legal aid services to patients when needed in a community health care system.

Impact: This pilot shows a medical-legal partnership for the super-utilizers of healthcare can lead to efficiencies within the health care system, reduce costs, and improve health outcomes among the most vulnerable patients.

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Economic Climate

Goal: Memphis Fast Forward is the shared vision and unprecedented action plan to create good jobs, a better-educated workforce, a safer community, a healthier citizenry and efficient government in Memphis and Shelby County.

Impact: Major violent and property crime were reduced by 22.8% and 25.5%. The pool of high-potential teacher candidates increased from 21 to 1,800 in one year. More than 15,000 jobs were created. New capital investment of $4.2 billion was generated. Local governments saved more than $75 million.

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Disabilities, Children, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of BORP’s Minority Outreach Program is to make recreational activities more accessible to disabled minority or immigrant individuals.

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

Goal: The goal of MDFT is to reduce adolescent drug abuse and increase self-efficacy in the teen population.

Impact: Systematic reviews comparing the effective of adolescent drug use interventions across studies found that MDFT reduces substance use, delinquency, behavior problems, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. The program has also been found to improve educational performance.

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: NFTE's mission is to motivate young people from low-income communities to stay in school, learn about entrepreneurship, and plan for successful futures.

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Families

Goal: A 10-session group program, with two individual sessions, for divorced mothers and their children to promote resilience in children after parental divorce.

Impact: At the fifteen-year followup, NBP reduced the incidence of internalizing disorders for females and males and substance-related disorders and substance use for males.

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families

Goal: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative is a regional collaboration dedicated to prevention, early detection, and management of diabetes. The Healthy Family Backpack Program connects with youth and their parents to educate participants on proper nutrition and promote healthy lifestyles to reduce childhood obesity.

Impact: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative has distributed nutritional education materials to over 300 families. Of ninety-two families that set a healthy goal at the start of the program, forty-five continued to maintain that goal at the two-month mark.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women, Urban

Goal: The program has three primary goals:
1) to improve pregnancy outcomes by promoting health-related behaviors;
2) to improve child health, development and safety by promoting competent care-giving; and
3) to enhance parent life-course development by promoting pregnancy planning, educational achievement, and employment.

The program also has two secondary goals: to enhance families' material support by providing links with needed health and social services, and to promote supportive relationships among family and friends.

Impact: The Nurse Family Partnership Program has shown to improve pregnancy outcomes, improve child health and development, and increase economic self-sufficiency.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women

Goal: The program has three primary goals:
1) to improve pregnancy outcomes by promoting health-related behaviors;
2) to improve child health, development and safety by promoting competent care-giving; and
3) to enhance parent life-course development by promoting pregnancy planning, educational achievement, and employment.

The program also has two secondary goals: to enhance families’ material support by providing links with needed health and social services, and to promote supportive relationships among family and friends.

Impact: Evaluations of the program have shown that women who were visited by nurses had significantly better outcomes than those who did not in terms of measures such as maternal health, maternal life-course development, child health and safety, and adolescent measures of delinquency.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults

Goal: The goal of this nurse-led program is to improve secondary prevention among patients with coronary heart disease.

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