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, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Urban
Goal: The goal of this program is to ensure that city planning and policy making accounts for how land use development impacts community health resources.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: The mission of this program is to provide a community-based, and community supported, economically viable and consumer-oriented, quality transportation service for seniors.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Adults
Goal: The goal of Project ReConnect is to enable HIV-positive people to explore career, educational, and volunteer activities and to de-stigmatize HIV through education and advocacy.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Urban
Goal: Reading Partners mission is to help children become lifelong readers by empowering communities to provide individualized instruction with measurable results.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of the program is to prevent young offenders from becoming chronic delinquents.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: THINK together's mission is to provide high quality academically-oriented out-of-school programs for students regardless of race, creed, or socioeconomic status.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children
Goal: Florida started the drug court movement by creating the first treatment-based drug court in the nation in 1989. The drug court concept was developed in Dade County (Miami, Florida) stemming from a federal mandate to reduce the inmate population or suffer the loss of federal funding. The Supreme Court of Florida recognized the severity of the situation and directed Judge Herbert Klein to research the problem. Judge Klein determined that a large majority of criminal inmates had been incarcerated because of drug charges and were revolving back through the criminal justice system because of underlying problems of drug addiction. It was decided that the delivery of treatment services needed to be coupled with the criminal justice system and the need for strong judicial leadership and partnerships to bring treatment services and the criminal justice system together.
Addressing the Social Determinants of Health through the Alameda County, California, Place Matters Policy Initiative (Alameda County, CA)
Filed under Good Idea, Health, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Place Matters initiative is to improve the health of participating communities by “addressing social conditions that lead to poor health” through “identifying the complex root causes of health disparities and defining strategies to address them.”
Impact: AC Place Matters has identified 10 best practices that could help other programs address social determinants of health: find and foster strong leadership, dedicate staff resources to the work, engage staff from across the local health department, contribute to building grassroots power, address root causes, partner with community organizations and leaders, partner with government institutions across sectors, work reactively and proactively, build capacity, and use tools that ensure a focus on health equity.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment
Goal: The mission of the program is to work vigorously to free participants from the burden of welfare dependency, and achieve a better, happier lifestyle through self-sufficiency. It will serve the taxpayers of Riverside County by reducing welfare dependency, thus making tax dollars available for other expenditures and needs.
Impact: The program produced a large net savings to the government through increased tax revenues and reduced welfare and food stamps payments (as an estimate, $2.84 saved for every $1.00 invested over five years).
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children
Goal: The goal of California Farm to School is to teach students about the path that food takes from the farm to their forks while instilling healthy eating habits.