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 Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: NFN's mission is to provide first-time parents with parenting information and education and connect them to services in the community.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens, Adults
Goal: The mission of the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine is to reduce death and disability due to tobacco use.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases
Goal: The goal of Partnership for Health is to reach HIV positive patients during regular doctor visits and increase their knowledge, skills, and motivations to practice safer sex.
Impact: Brief provider counseling emphasizing the negative consequences of unsafe sex can reduce HIV transmission behaviors in HIV-positive patients presenting with risky behavioral profiles.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve the school environment by reducing violence, assaults, discipline referrals, and increasing academic performance.
Impact: An evaluation found that discipline referrals decreased by 57.7%, assaults decreased by 90.2%, and expulsions decreased by 73.0% in participating schools.
Peers Reaching Out and Modeling Intervention Strategies (PROMISE) (Texas, Colorado, California, New York, Washington)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban
Goal: The goal of Community PROMISE is to encourage HIV prevention practices.
Impact: PROMISE leads to significant community-wide progress toward consistent HIV risk reduction.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Urban
Goal: The goal of Popular Opinion Leader is to reach as many people as possible in order to successfully and dramatically reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: To reduce HIV risk behaviors among adolescents aged 11 to 14.
Impact: This program effectively modified sexual risk among adolescents aged 11 to 14 by focusing students on positive future selves.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and to decrease violence and weapons-carrying among high school students.
Impact: At 2-year follow-up, students in Project TND schools were about half as likely to use tobacco when compared with students in control schools. Students in Project TND schools were about one-fifth as likely to use hard drugs relative to similar students in control schools.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Other Conditions
Goal: The goal of this study is to determine how many Community Health Workers (CHW) would be needed to reduce emergency department (ED) visits and associated hospitalizations among their assigned patients to be cost-neutral from a payer's perspective.
Impact: This study adds significant knowledge to the existing literature on CHW programs, and particularly provides critical information to payers that can be used for making decisions on appropriate payment models
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Women, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Safer Sex project is to increase condom use, prevent recurrent STDs, and eliminate or reduce risky sexual behaviors among adolescent females that have been diagnosed with an STD.
Impact: The Safer Sex project shows that individualized safer sex interventions may improve condom use and decrease the number of partners among adolescent girls who have had an STD.