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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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Phoenix Healthy Homes (Phoenix, AZ)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Phoenix Healthy Homes project was to use a multi-factorial approach to reduce hazard prevalence and improve self-reports of home safety and respiratory health.

Impact: The Phoenix Healthy Homes project showed that a tailored healthy homes improvement package significantly improves self-reported respiratory health and safety, reduces respiratory health and injury hazards, and can be implemented in concert with a mobile clinical setting.

Positive Action

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve academic success, behavior, and character development.

Impact: Multiple studies have consistently found PA effective for improving achievement scores, attendance, and self-concept and for reducing drug use, violence, and other problem behaviors. Results were often better in more disadvantaged schools.

Preventive Health Program/ Hepatitis C Testing (Erie County, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases

Goal: The intent of the practice is to decrease mortality and morbidity relative to Hepatitis A, B or C infection rate in Western New York.

Rideshare-Based Medical Transportation for Medicaid Patients (Philadelphia area, PA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: To evaluate the impact of rideshare-based medical transportation on the proportion of Medicaid patients attending scheduled primary care appointments.

Safe in the City (Denver, Long Beach, and San Francisco)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases

Goal: The goal of this intervention is to prevent new STD infections.

Impact: The Safe in the City program shows that clinic waiting room videos displaying prevention knowledge and techniques can actually help to reduce the number of new infections of certain STDs.

Seeking Safety

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to help clients move beyond trauma and substance abuse.

Impact: Multiple evaluations of the Seeking Safety program in various settings have shown positive outcomes for substance abuse/addiction, substance abuse disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Senior Wellness Program (St. Augustine, FL)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve the quality of life of residents of Northeast Florida by providing programs and services which raise the health, education and economic standards of citizens living at the lowest social and economic levels.

Strong Women - Healthy Hearts (also called StrongPeople Healthy Weight)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Adults, Women, Rural

Goal: The goal of Strong Women – Healthy Hearts is to decrease cardiovascular disease among middle-aged women through behavioral changes in diet and physical activity.

Telehealth Connections for Children and Youth (Florida)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children

Goal: The purpose of this project is to link Florida’s Title V program (CMS) and local Community Health Centers to:

- Reach and identify uninsured children with special health care needs in Florida and enroll them in insurance
- Focus on underserved communities that traditionally have faced numerous barriers to care, particularly those in the black and Hispanic communities, and children living in rural areas
- Use telemedicine to facilitate enrollment in CMS, care coordination, and access to specialty care
- Work with trusted community elders -- grandmothers -- as lay health partners to facilitate health-related outreach and support to children with special health care needs and their families.

In short, the project seeks to build a sustainable medical home for children with special health care needs in the safety net.

Text4Health

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Adults, Women, Urban

Goal: Text4Health aims to improve immunization rates in urban, underserved, low-income populations via text messaging.

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.