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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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Healthy Active Lents (Portland, OR)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: The goal of this program is to promote active people in active neighborhoods

Healthy Kids Express Screening and Immunization Program (St. Louis, Missouri Metro Region)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens, Families, Urban

Goal: The mission of HKES&I is to increase access to needed healthcare for children. This is accomplished through the goal of identifying children who need further follow-up, particularly for hearing and vision problems, and to connect them to those services.

Impact: Healthy Kids Express Screening and Immunization program is successful in providing evidence based care to low-income populations and for connecting those identified with screening needs to needed follow-up care.

Heartbeat Wales (Wales)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults

Goal: The goal of Heartbeat Wales was to reduce behavioral risks for cardiovascular disease.

Horizon House (Indianapolis, IN)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes

Goal: Horizon House believes homeless guests possess strengths that are key to ending their homelessness, and states its mission is "to be a focal point for services and assistance to empower individuals and families to no longer be homeless."

Hospital Diversion Initiative (Kansas City, MO)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Hospital Diversion Initiative is to connect individuals who chronically utilize the inpatient and emergency rooms with outpatient care.

Impact: After three months in the program, participants showed a 66% reduction in ER visits, 68% reduction in inpatient hospital stays, a 72% decrease in homelessness, an 18% reduction in unemployment, and a 66% decrease in past 30 day arrests. More than 350 individuals have been served so far.

Indiana's Earned Income Tax Credit Campaign (Indiana)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Government Assistance, Families

Goal: The goal of this program is to encourage eligible families to utilize the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Kinship Navigator Program (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Families

Goal: The program aims to provide information and resources to kinship caregivers (grandparents, relatives, foster parents, and others) in New York State.

L.A. County's Emergency Survival Program (Los Angeles)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Governance, Urban

Goal: The goal is to help prepare communities for earthquakes, fires, floods, terrorism, and other natural and man-made disasters.

La Cocina (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Income, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The mission of La Cocina is to cultivate low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance, and access to market opportunities.

Impact: La Cocina supports dozens of successful food businesses run by low-income women and people from immigrant communities.

Latino Health Insurance Program (LHIP) (Boston, MA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To create a health insurance access program that reduces barriers to obtaining insurance to care for Latinos in Boston.

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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