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 Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes
Children ages 12 years and younger whose households use vouchers show improvements in education, employment, and income later in life. Outcomes for adolescents vary by gender. Females 10-20 years of age whose families use tenant-based vouchers to live in lower poverty neighborhoods experience better health outcomes while males of the same age experience worse physical and mental health outcomes. Additional research is needed to better understand and address challenges faced by adolescent males.
CPSTF finds societal benefits exceed the cost of tenant-based housing voucher programs that serve families with young children who are living in public housing, provide pre-move counseling, and move families to neighborhoods with greater opportunities.
Tenant-based housing voucher programs give many people access to better housing and neighborhood opportunities, both of which are considered social determinants of health. Because these programs are designed for households with low incomes, they are expected to advance health equity.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens, Families, Urban
The mission of HKES&I is to increase access to needed healthcare for children. This is accomplished through the goal of identifying children who need further follow-up, particularly for hearing and vision problems, and to connect them to those services.
Healthy Kids Express Screening and Immunization program is successful in providing evidence based care to low-income populations and for connecting those identified with screening needs to needed follow-up care.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Healthy Love seeks to provide a safe, culturally tailored intervention for heterosexual black women to reduce their disproportionately high risk of transmitting and contracting HIV and other STDs. Healthy Love aims to encourage sexual abstinence, HIV testing, and receipt of test results; increase women's condom usage during vaginal sex with male partners; and reduce the number of women's sex partners and unprotected anal and vaginal sex with male partners. Healthy Love also seeks to improve HIV/STD knowledge, self-efficacy for using condoms, intentions to use condoms, and attitudes towards condoms.
Healthy Love increased participants' likelihood of using condoms, being tested for HIV, and receiving their test results. The intervention also reduced participants' self-described actions with male partners that can increase black women's risks for HIV infection.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
The mission of the program is to shape the evolving health system by developing and spreading high-value models of community-based care and self-management for diverse populations with chronic conditions.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults
The mission of the program is to shape the evolving health system by developing and spreading high-value models of community-based care and self-management for diverse populations with chronic conditions.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Teens, Rural
The primary goal of the Independence Youth Court is to reduce incidents of juvenile crime, divert offending youth from the Juvenile Justice System and to provide an alternative to the Jackson County Family court process and further contact with the police.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Cancer, Women
The goal of the Inside Knowledge campaign is to increase knowledge and awareness about the signs and symptoms of the five major gynecologic cancers.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens
The goals of this program are to establish a single application for school-based youth prevention programs; provide a common language and approach for parent, community, and student health programs; and reinforce prevention messages from a variety of sources.
Students who received the Michigan Model curriculum had significantly better health outcomes in several areas: social and emotional health, interpersonal skills, aggressive behavior, safety attitudes and skills, physical activity skills, nutrition behavior, drug refusal skills, recent alcohol and tobacco use, and intentions to use alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children
The Mobile C.A.R.E. Foundation’s mission is to provide complimentary and comprehensive asthma care and education to children and families in Chicago’s underserved communities via mobile medical units called "Asthma Vans."
The Mobile C.A.R.E. Foundation’s Asthma Vans provide children and families in Chicago’s underserved communities with complimentary and comprehensive asthma care and education resulting in reduced school absenteeism, decreased ER visits and lower hospitalization rates.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education, Teens
The mission of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is to intervene in the lives of high-school dropouts and provide them with the values, life skills, education, and self-discipline necessary to succeed.
The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program resulted in participants succeeding in several aspects of their lives compared to their control group counterparts. Program participants were more likely to have a GED certificate, more likely to have started college, and more likely to be working.