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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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Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project (GUAMAP) (Tucscon, AZ)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alternative Medicine, Rural

Goal: The goal of GUAMAP is to train rural community health workers to provide remote settlements in northern Guatemala with access to sustainable, low-cost, low-technology, effective health care through the use of acupuncture.

Healthy Kids Dental (Michigan)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Oral Health, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: The project goal of Healthy Kids Dental was to increase utilization of dental care by Medicaid enrollees through a contract with a commercial dental plan.

Healthy San Francisco (San Francisco)

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

Goal: The goal of Healthy San Francisco is to make health care services accessible to San Francisco's uninsured population.

Medical-Legal Partnership (Kansas City Metropolitan Area)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the medical-legal partnership is to improve health outcomes through quality legal services.

Impact: The Medical-Legal Partnership provides legal assistance to patients on issues that directly or indirectly affect health.

Medical-Legal Partnerships: Investing in Social Services as a Core Strategy for Healthcare (New York City)

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

Goal: New York City LegalHealth is a fruitful partnership that operates in 11 clinics of the city's public hospitals. One example is by supporting individuals in tenant-landlord disputes.

Impact: With an average of $225 per case, LegalHealth was able to effectively demand fixes in asthma patients' living conditions. This impact directly resulted in a 90% drop in emergency room visits and hospital admissions for this asthma patient group.

Multicultural Health Promoters Program (Montgomery County, MD)

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

Goal: The goals of the program are to improve the health of recent immigrant families by training native speakers from different countries to help enroll members of their communities in various publicly funded health programs.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Participation and Health Care Expenditures Among Low-Income Adults

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults

Goal: To determine whether the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which addresses food insecurity, can reduce health care expenditures.

Access to Transportation and Health Care Visits for Medicaid Enrollees With Diabetes

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

Goal: The goal of the study was to evaluate the association between Medicaid‐provided nonemergency medical transportation and diabetes care visits.

Impact: The findings of this study underscore the importance of ensuring transportation to Medicaid populations with diabetes, particularly in the rural areas where the prevalence of diabetes and complications are higher and the availability of medical resources lower than in the urban areas.

Avian Flu Outbreak and Vaccination Drill (Yolo County, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases

Goal: The purpose of the exercise was to train health and emergency medical personnel in planning for and responding to large scale disease outbreaks. The most proven method to assure an effective response to a real event is to practice a well-coordinated multi-agency field exercise.

Cambridge-Somerville Healthy Homes Project (Cambridge and Somerville, MA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Cambridge-Somerville Healthy Homes Project is to lower the frequency of asthma attacks in children and help families make their homes safer.

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.