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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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Rhode Island’s Health Equity Zones: Addressing Local Problems with Local Solutions

Filed under Good Idea, Health

Goal: The goal of the program was to recognize and address the diversity of local health disparities by marshaling local community involvement in the place-based Health Equity Zones.

Impact: The framework established through the Health Equity Zones allows for the continued collaboration between governmental public health entities and stakeholders in the community to address health disparities.

Richland County Community Diabetes Project (Richland County, MT)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Diabetes, Rural

Goal: The goal of this project is to build community support for persons with Type 2 diabetes living in frontier Eastern Montana.

Richmond Comprehensive Homicide Initiative (Richmond, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens, Urban

Goal: The goal of this strategy is to reduce homicide in Richmond, California.

Rock On Cafe (Broome and Tioga, NY)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children

Goal: To create a sustainable school lunch program that incorporated healthier food items by leveraging the combined efforts of several school districts.

Roots of Empathy (Canada)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children

Goal: The program has five main goals: foster the development of empathy; develop emotional literacy; reduce levels of bullying, aggression and violence, and promote children's pro-social behaviors; increase knowledge of human development, learning, and infant safety; and prepare students for responsible citizenship and responsive parenting.

Sacramento Job Corps Center (Sacramento, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Educational Attainment

Goal: As a national, primarily residential training program, Job Corps' mission is to attract eligible young adults, teach them the skills they need to become employable and independent, and place them in meaningful jobs or further education.

Safe Child Program

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children

Goal: The program has two main focuses. The first is prevention of sexual, emotional, or physical abuse by people known to the child. The other focus of the program is safety around strangers.

Safe Routes for Seniors (New York City)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults, Urban

Goal: To improve cardiovascular health among seniors by improving the pedestrian environment in New York.

Safe Sidewalks and Safe Routes to School

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: Safe Routes to School programs aim to make it safer for students to walk and bike to school and encourage more walking and biking where safety is not a barrier.

Safer Homes Project (Pacoima)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Children, Teens, Adults

Goal: The mission of the Safer Homes Program is to help residents to create healthy comes for their families in order to prevent environmentally related health problems such as lead poisoning, asthma, mold, and moisture.

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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