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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 Love (Atlanta, GA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: 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.

Impact: 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.

Heaven's Loft (Little Rock, AR)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Rural

Goal: The goal of Heaven's Loft is to encourage low-income expectant mothers to receive prenatal care, well-baby care, immunizations, health screenings, and educational classes on childbirth, breastfeeding, and infant/child care and parenting.

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.

HIV Performance Improvement Program (Suffolk County, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: The program's objectives are to perform systematic and objective monitoring and evaluation of the quality and appropriateness of care and pursuit of opportunities to improve care and resolve problems as they are identified.

HIV/STD Risk Reduction Interventions for African American and Latino Adolescent Girls (Philadelphia)

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

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to reduce self-reported unprotected sexual intercourse among African American and Latino adolescent girls.

Impact: Skill-based HIV/STD interventions can improve condom-use and reduce sexual risk behaviors, along with STD rates, among African American and Latino teen girls in clinical settings.

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.

Home Vaccination Intervention (Melbourne, Australia)

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

Goal: The goal of this intervention is to promote catch-up immunizations for children who are behind the recommended immunization schedule.

Impact: Home vaccination for children behind in their immunization schedule is an effective and relatively cheap method of completing recommended vaccinations, and can be particularly beneficial for disadvantaged families.

Home-Delivered Meals Postdischarge From Heart Failure Hospitalization (GOURMET-HF) (Columbia University Medical Center, the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Health System, and the University of Michigan Health System)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults

Goal: The goals of GOURMET-HF are to assess the safety of the intervention, including effects on cardiac biomarkers and rehospitalization burden.

Impact: Home-delivered DASH/SRD after HF hospitalization appear safe in selected patients and had favorable effects on HF clinical status and 30-day readmissions. The GOURMET-HF pilot study suggests that postdischarge nutritional support has the potential to improve HF symptoms and reduce readmissions

Hometown Walk of Hope (Union City, TN)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Cancer, Urban

Goal: The goal of Hometown Walk of Hope is to raise money to help Obion County residents who have been diagnosed with cancer.

Increasing Colorectal Screening Among Filipino Americans (Los Angeles)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to increase colorectal cancer screening among an Asian American population.

Impact: A multicomponent intervention, including an educational session, can increase colorectal screening rates among Filipino Americans, even without the distribution of free fecal occult blood test kits.

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.