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 Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults, Urban
Goal: The goal of Healthy IDEAS is to detect and address depression through effective, evidence-based screening and health promotion education.
Impact: Studies show that after 6 months in the Healthy IDEAS program, significantly more of the participants knew how to get help for depression (93% versus 68%), reported that increasing activity helped them feel better (89% versus 72%), and reported reduced pain (45% versus 16%) than at the beginning.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: To eliminate or reduce sexual transmission risk behavior, to eliminate or reduce injection drug use risks and to improve health care practices and quality of life among people living with HIV.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Children, Adults, Families
Goal: The goal of the Healthy Places Coalition is to advance public health involvement in land-use and transportation planning in order to ensure that all neighborhoods in California promote the opportunity to live a healthy life.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults
Goal: The Pennsylvania Department of Aging offers this fall risk screening and prevention program to adults 50 years of age and older. The program is designed to raise awareness of falls, introduce steps on how to reduce falls, improve overall health, and provide referrals and resources.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults
Goal: The goal of the Heart to Heart program is to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Urban
Goal: The goal of HELPS Programs is to strengthen students’ reading fluency so they will be better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills, including comprehension.
Impact: HELPS is a supplemental curriculum that improves students reading fluency, a commonly neglected aspect of children's core reading curriculum, in order to help them become successful readers.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of Hip-Hop to Health Jr is to reduce gains in BMI in preschool minority children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Adults
Goal: HIV Big Deal seeks to promote safer sex practices among men who have sex with men via internet-based video drama.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban
Goal: The goals of the Holistic Health Recovery Program are to promote health and improve quality of life of injection drug users.
Impact: Implementation of the program resulted in a decrease in addition severity, a decrease in risk behavior, and significant improvement in behavioral skills and quality of life.
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.