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.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Adults, Families, Urban
Goal: Atlanta Streets Alive seeks to shift the current car-centric dynamic and replace it with a proactive community that comes together on a regular basis to participate in active transportation, physical activity, cultural and artistic endeavors, and to enjoy our neighborhoods and communities from a different perspective-from the street.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban
Goal: The goal of this program is to create a regional approach to emerging infection based on public education, environmental monitoring, and disease surveillance.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Teens, Women, Urban
Goal: The Centering Pregnancy Plus Project aims to reduce risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and improve health outcomes for young pregnant women, aged 14-21.
Impact: Facilitated group discussions promoting condom use among young women can increase condom use among participants.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: Healthy Love seeks to provide a safe, culturally tailored intervention for heterosexual black women to reduce their disproportionately high risk of transmitting and contracting HIV and other STDs. Healthy Love aims to encourage sexual abstinence, HIV testing, and receipt of test results; increase women's condom usage during vaginal sex with male partners; and reduce the number of women's sex partners and unprotected anal and vaginal sex with male partners. Healthy Love also seeks to improve HIV/STD knowledge, self-efficacy for using condoms, intentions to use condoms, and attitudes towards condoms.
Impact: Healthy Love increased participants' likelihood of using condoms, being tested for HIV, and receiving their test results. The intervention also reduced participants' self-described actions with male partners that can increase black women's risks for HIV infection.
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.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goals of this intervention were to delay initiation of sexual intercourse for youth who are not sexually active, encourage the use of condoms among sexually active youth, and enhance communication about sex between youths and their mothers.
Impact: Keepin' It R.E.A.L. teen participants increased their condom-use during sexual activity while maternal participants reported feeling more comfortable when discussing sexual issues with their teens.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve cardiovascular health among residents of the Atlanta Empowerment Zone (AEZ).
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: This program aims to promote delay of sexual intercourse, condom use among those who were sexually active, and communication on sexuality between fathers (or father figures) and sons.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: SAHARA is a computer-based HIV intervention that targets African American women to promote healthy sexual behaviors to reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
Impact: These findings which demonstrate major improvements in HIV-preventive behaviors suggest that SAHARA is an effective evidence-based promising practice; it is inexpensive and only requires two hours.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: Youth Fit for Life aims to increase physical activity among children enrolled in after-school care programs.