Promising Practices

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

Goal: The program’s mission is to maximize the wellness and independence of adults in their community.

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: Both local and state governments face huge challenges in providing senior populations access to public, agency, professional and family caregivers, and community services that allow seniors to remain independent. The complex maze of constantly changing program and service eligibility rules challenge even the most knowledgeable senior service providers. Fragmentation within senior service agencies further results in duplication of services, unnecessary waiting lists, and caregiver and volunteer burnout. This resource attempts to address those problems by providing quick and easy access to a variety of programs.

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: Septic systems serve approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population and about 40 percent of new developments. The U.S. Census Bureau has indicated that at least 10 percent of septic systems have stopped working. Some communities report failure rates as high as 70 percent! The goal of this program is to improve the performance of decentralized septic systems.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The objectives are to increase knowledge of SIDS risk reduction strategies, including sleep position and roomsharing without bedsharing.

Impact: A 15-minute educational session with small groups of parents is effective in informing parents about the importance of safe sleep position and in changing parent behavior for at least the first 6 months of the infant's life.

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: Smart Growth has three straightforward goals:
- to save our most valuable remaining natural resources before they are forever lost,
- to support existing communities and neighborhoods by targeting state resources to support development in areas where the infrastructure is already in place or planned to support it, and
- to save taxpayers millions of dollars in the unnecessary cost of building the infrastructure required to support sprawl.

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air

Goal: The goal of this partnership is to improve the environmental performance and fuel efficiency of the US freight sector (truck & rail) through the use of a voluntary market incentive system and to encourage retailers/end users to choose trucking and/or rail companies that are environmental leaders in their respective industry segments.

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Oral Health, Children

Goal: S4L strives to create self-confidence and change the lives of underprivileged children by providing orthodontic services at no cost.

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Oral Health, Children, Families

Goal: The Smile Programs... the mobile dentists mission is to bring state-of-the-art, dental care to those students in need in the most comfortable and effective way possible.

Impact: Smile Programs provides mobile dental care to children in schools in over a dozen states.

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: Spark's mission is to provide life-changing apprenticeships to youth in underserved communities across the United States.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children, Teens

Goal: The goal of SPORT is to help adolescents avoid substance use by increasing physical activity and bettering their self images.

Impact: This program provides a whole body experience, where youth focus on improvements in their lives instead of drugs.