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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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Healthy IDEAS (Houston, TX)

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

Goal: The goal of Healthy IDEAS is to detect and address depression through effective, evidence-based screening and health promotion education.

Impact: Studies show that after 6 months in the Healthy IDEAS program, significantly more of the participants knew how to get help for depression (93% versus 68%), reported that increasing activity helped them feel better (89% versus 72%), and reported reduced pain (45% versus 16%) than at the beginning.

Healthy Living Project (HLP)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: To eliminate or reduce sexual transmission risk behavior, to eliminate or reduce injection drug use risks and to improve health care practices and quality of life among people living with HIV.

Healthy Places Coalition (California)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Children, Adults, Families

Goal: The goal of the Healthy Places Coalition is to advance public health involvement in land-use and transportation planning in order to ensure that all neighborhoods in California promote the opportunity to live a healthy life.

Healthy Steps for Older Adults (HSOA) (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults

Goal: The Pennsylvania Department of Aging offers this fall risk screening and prevention program to adults 50 years of age and older. The program is designed to raise awareness of falls, introduce steps on how to reduce falls, improve overall health, and provide referrals and resources.

Heart to Heart (Florence, SC)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults

Goal: The goal of the Heart to Heart program is to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease.

Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of HELPS Programs is to strengthen students’ reading fluency so they will be better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills, including comprehension.

Impact: HELPS is a supplemental curriculum that improves students reading fluency, a commonly neglected aspect of children's core reading curriculum, in order to help them become successful readers.

Hip-Hop to Health Jr (Chicago)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of Hip-Hop to Health Jr is to reduce gains in BMI in preschool minority children.

HIV Big Deal (New York City)

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

Goal: HIV Big Deal seeks to promote safer sex practices among men who have sex with men via internet-based video drama.

Holistic Health Recovery Program (New Haven, CT)

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

Goal: The goals of the Holistic Health Recovery Program are to promote health and improve quality of life of injection drug users.

Impact: Implementation of the program resulted in a decrease in addition severity, a decrease in risk behavior, and significant improvement in behavioral skills and quality of life.

HORIZONS (Atlanta, GA)

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

Goal: The goal of the HORIZONS program is to reduce sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), particularly HIV, by increasing condom use and partner communication about safer sex.

Impact: The HORIZONS program empowered African American female adolescents to pursue safer sex and reduced the number of STDs among those in the program.

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.