Promising Practices

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Hospital Diversion Initiative is to connect individuals who chronically utilize the inpatient and emergency rooms with outpatient care.

Impact: After three months in the program, participants showed a 66% reduction in ER visits, 68% reduction in inpatient hospital stays, a 72% decrease in homelessness, an 18% reduction in unemployment, and a 66% decrease in past 30 day arrests. More than 350 individuals have been served so far.

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Employment, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: Hot Bread Kitchen's mission is to increase economic security for foreign-born, low-income women and men by helping them gain access to the thriving specialty food industry.

Impact: Hot Bread Kitchen trains low-income, immigrant men and women for successful professional baking careers.

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

Goal: The "I Have a Dream"® Program helps children from low-income areas reach their education and career goals by providing a long-term program of mentoring, tutoring, and enrichment with an assured opportunity for higher education.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to increase HIV preventative behavior among inner-city minority adolescents.

Impact: Students in the classroom-based intervention group had more sustained changes in HIV prevention behavior over time compared to those in the peer-based intervention groups.

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families

Goal: Effective asthma control can improve quality of life, reduce medical costs, and reduce the number of asthma-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations, school and work days missed, days of restricted activity, and deaths each year.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women

Goal: The goal of Insights is to increase condom use among young women at risk for HIV and other STDs.

Impact: Insights proves that tailored cognitive/behavioral minimal self-help interventions hold promise as HIV/STD prevention strategies for diverse populations of young at-risk women.

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Educational Attainment, Children

Goal: The purpose of the Interlocal Association's (IA) Youth with Disabilities Project was to support demonstration projects to help Workforce Investment Act (WIA)-assisted youth programs develop the capacity to serve youth with disabilities. Although youth with disabilities had been served under previous employment and training programs during the latter years of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), with the implementation of WIA, services such as work experience, summer employment, and others decreased substantially. IA looked to expand and enhance the quality of services to youth with disabilities.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families

Goal: To decrease saturated fat consumption and thus reduce coronary heart disease risk factors in young children.

Impact: STRIP's intervention of diet counseling that began at a child's infancy favorably impacted the child's diet through childhood up to ages 8 or 10, but the goal of 2:1 unsaturated-saturated fatty acid ratio in a child's diet was not met for either intervention or control group.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Women, Urban

Goal: The goal of IT'S TIME is to help women of child-bearing age quit smoking.

Impact: The IT'S TIME program succeeded in helping women quit smoking.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children

Goal: The goal of Itchy's Alphabet is to help children improve their literacy levels.