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 Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families
Goal: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative is a regional collaboration dedicated to prevention, early detection, and management of diabetes. The Healthy Family Backpack Program connects with youth and their parents to educate participants on proper nutrition and promote healthy lifestyles to reduce childhood obesity.
Impact: The Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative has distributed nutritional education materials to over 300 families. Of ninety-two families that set a healthy goal at the start of the program, forty-five continued to maintain that goal at the two-month mark.
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, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: The long-term goals of this program are to decrease the rate of recidivism in families receiving social services, lower the rate of multiparent teenage pregnancies, reduce the rate of juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, and stop the intergenerational cycle of child abuse by teaching positive parenting behaviors.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the program is to assist students in establishing physical activity as part of their daily lives.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Public Safety, Children, Adults, Families
Goal: To prevent pedestrian deaths and injuries in Oakland, California.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of this program is to foster dialog, negotiation, and problem solving between offenders and victims in Oakland.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of the Open Airways for Schools intervention is to improve asthma control among children in Latino communities in Chicago.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
Goal: This program has three goals: (1) to strengthen students' social competency skills in communication, self-control, and interpersonal problem-solving; (2) to promote the creation of growth-fostering relationships among students and between students and the adults in their lives; and (3) to build a sense of community in classrooms and schools by providing a common "language" that fosters communication among students and between students and their teachers and other adults.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Oral Health, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the program is to train non-dental health and childcare professionals in dental disease screening and dental referrals for children.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Urban
Goal: The goals of the program are to carry out a comprehensive strategy to apprehend and prosecute offenders who carry firearms, to put others on notice that offenders face certain and serious punishment for carrying illegal firearms, and to prevent youths from following the same criminal path.