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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.

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Behavior Management Through Adventure

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men

Goal: The goal of Behavior Management through Adventure is to address the needs of at-risk youth in therapeutic settings.

Impact: Behavior Management Through Adventure was successful in lowering rearrest rates, decreasing the time period from release until rearrest, improving depression symptoms, increasing family self-concept, and lowering social introversion.

Brief Strategic Family Therapy (Miami, FL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Families

Goal: The goal of BSFT is to improve a youth's behavior problems by improving family interactions that are presumed to be directly related to the child's symptoms, thus reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors for adolescent drug abuse and other conduct problems.

Impact: Adolescents who participated in BSFT showed a significantly greater reduction in conduct problems than adolescents in the comparison condition, who received a participatory-learning group intervention. BSFT participants also showed a significantly greater reduction in socialized aggression.

Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program (USA)

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

Goal: The Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program's goal is to provide comprehensive youth development services and reduce teen pregnancy among economically disadvantaged teenagers.

Impact: Pregnancy prevention programs can work successfully among females when started early in adolescence and when male counterparts are also educated appropriately on condom-use and delayed sexual actively onset.

Child Care Executive Partnership (Florida)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Poverty, Children, Families

Goal: The program's mission is to promote public-private partnerships to ensure that the children of Florida are provided safe, high quality, developmentally appropriate and enriching child care while parents work to remain self-sufficient.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Late-Life Depression

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of this program is to use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression in older adults.

Impact: Research has shown that behavioral cognitive therapy helped patients reduce their depression symptoms, and maintained this improvement at 1-year follow-up more effectively than other types of therapy. At 6-month follow-up, clients who completed CBT were less likely to meet criteria for diagnoses of depression than clients who completed treatment as usual.

Columbia County Healthy Neighborhoods Program (Columbia County)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Families

Goal: The Healthy Neighborhoods program seeks to reduce housing related illness and injury through prevention and education.

Impact: In the past five years, the HNP visited 31,000 homes with 85,000 residents, and provided the asthma intervention to 11,000 adults and children with asthma. The assessments created a valuable data set about the health effects of housing hazards.

CommuteShare (Burlington, VT)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation

Goal: The goal of this program is to provide affordable, reliable, and flexible transportation to low-income residents of Burlington.

Countywide Concussion Program (Miami Concussion Model) (Miami-Dade County, FL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Teens

Goal: The goals of the MCM are to provide a comprehensive and centralized concussion care program to 1) increase concussion awareness and identification through education and training; 2) facilitate the return to play decision with effective medical treatment, which includes baseline neurocognitive testing; and 3) implement a standardized concussion care protocol and concussion injury surveillance system to assist in the prevention of concussions, improve player safety, and limit school liability.

Impact: From the pilot evaluation of the model it was determined that the MCM model or a similarly designed one is effective in increasing the number of concussions identified, reported, and also treated at a clinic.

Early Risers 'Skills for Success' Program (Minneapolis, MN)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children

Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent behavior problems and substance abuse.

EnhanceFitness (Seattle, WA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of EnhanceFitness is to encourage older adults to engage in regular physical activity to improve their health and well-being.

Impact: EnhanceFitness participants reported a 13% improvement in social function, a 52% improvement in depression, and a 35% improvement in physical functioning. Additionally, participants' healthcare costs were 21% less than those of non-participants after one year.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success and/or promise in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
  2. The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures of improvement in outcome of interest (i.e. increase in voter registration, not just delivery of voter registration drive) and/ or the outcome measure is increased or improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant.

A Good Idea meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. The program evaluation is limited to descriptive measure(s) of success/accomplishment (i.e., program participation rates, number of services/education sessions/radio messages provided). Note: oftentimes, the program has been newly implemented and a program evaluation has not yet been conducted. Programs that have not yet been evaluated, but which show promise in improving health or quality of life, are classified as Good Ideas until an evaluation is conducted.

An Evidence-Based Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
  2. The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures showing improvement in the outcome(s) of interest after the implementation of the program (i.e. increase in smoking cessation, not just the delivery of a smoking cessation program). The outcome measure(s) is/are compared at relevant time periods before and after the intervention or program implementation. Alternatively, the evaluation study compares the outcome(s) between an intervention group and an appropriate control group.
  3. The study is of peer-review quality and presents numbers in a scientific manner; measurements of precision and reliability are included (e.g. confidence intervals, standard errors), results from statistical tests show a significant difference or change in the outcome measure(s), and relevant point estimates and p-values are presented. Note: if the results from an evaluation of a program are presented in a scientific manner and the outcome measure is improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant, the practice is classified as effective and not evidence-based.