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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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Healthy Steps for Young Children: Palm Beach (Palm Beach, FL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: Improve early identification of concerns and initiate interventions to improve the health, development and emotional wellness of children, newborn to age three.

Impact: HSFYC parents were less likely to use severe discipline (OR: 0.68) and more likely to negotiate with their child (OR: 1.20). HSFYC parents had greater odds of reporting a clinical or borderline concern regarding their child's behavior (OR: 1.35).

HeartPower! (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: The goal of HeartPower! is to increase knowledge of the heart and heart disease risk factors.

Help Me Grow: Connecticut (Connecticut)

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

Goal: The program’s goal is to identify children at risk for developmental or behavioral problems and to connect them to existing community resources.

Home Again: A Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Portland and Multnomah County (Portland and Multnomah County, OR)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program is to end homelessness in the City of Portland and Multnomah County by 2015. As efforts to end homelessness continue, city and county officials will focus on nine actions. Programs throughout the county will address moving people into Housing First, ending the practice of discharging people into homelessness from jails and hospitals, improving outreach, emphasizing permanent solutions, increasing the housing supply, creating new partnerships, improving the rent assistance system, increasing economic opportunity for homeless people and implementing new data collection technology.

Home-Delivered Meals Postdischarge From Heart Failure Hospitalization (GOURMET-HF) (Columbia University Medical Center, the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Health System, and the University of Michigan Health System)

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

Goal: The goals of GOURMET-HF are to assess the safety of the intervention, including effects on cardiac biomarkers and rehospitalization burden.

Impact: Home-delivered DASH/SRD after HF hospitalization appear safe in selected patients and had favorable effects on HF clinical status and 30-day readmissions. The GOURMET-HF pilot study suggests that postdischarge nutritional support has the potential to improve HF symptoms and reduce readmissions

Hometown Walk of Hope (Union City, TN)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Cancer, Urban

Goal: The goal of Hometown Walk of Hope is to raise money to help Obion County residents who have been diagnosed with cancer.

Horizon Communities in Prison

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Families

Goal: The purpose of the Horizon Communities in Prison program is to build links between the faith community and correctional institutions in order to affect an inner transformation of inmates and prepare them to live with others in mutual support, trust and respect.

HORIZONS (Atlanta, GA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of the HORIZONS program is to reduce sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), particularly HIV, by increasing condom use and partner communication about safer sex.

Impact: The HORIZONS program empowered African American female adolescents to pursue safer sex and reduced the number of STDs among those in the program.

Increasing Age-Appropriate Immunization Rates for Children in Butler County and Surrounding Area (Butler County, KS)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Rural

Goal: The goal of this program was to increase immunization rates in the Butler County area.

Impact: Immunization rates increased from 53.2% to 72.4% and parents reported a better understanding of the importance of timely vaccinations.

Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills Model HIV Intervention (Connecticut)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to increase HIV preventative behavior among inner-city minority adolescents.

Impact: Students in the classroom-based intervention group had more sustained changes in HIV prevention behavior over time compared to those in the peer-based intervention groups.

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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