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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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Parent-Child Home Program: Palm Beach (Palm Beach)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: To prepare children of disadvantaged families for academic success and to strengthen families through intensive home visiting.

Impact: The Parent-Child Home Program builds school readiness, starting from the home. PCHP utilizes a non-directive, in-home modeling approach that encourages children's development, builds meaningful relationships between parents and children, and allows underserved families to access educational early-childhood services.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children

Goal: The goal of PCIT is to improve the behavior of children suffering from conduct disorders by strengthening the parent-child relationship and teaching parenting and discipline skills.

Parenting Management Training - The Oregon Model (PMTO) (Eugene, OR)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: The goal of this program is to teach effective parenting practices in order to promote healthy child adjustment.

Impact: Immediate changes for parents include improved positive parenting practices and reduced family coercion. Benefits to these parenting practices, in turn, have been found to result in reductions in child behavior problems and parental depression.

Parenting Wisely (Ohio)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce child behavior problems and delinquency and substance abuse among adolescents, to improve parenting knowledge and skills, and to strengthen the relationship between adolescent and parent.

Impact: Findings from studies show an association between Parenting Wisely participation and improvements in family problem solving, family roles, family involvement, parenting self-efficacy, parenting sense of competence, and decreased adolescent violent behavior.

Parenting With Love and Limits (Savannah, GA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Families

Goal: The goal of the Parenting with Love and Limits® (PLL) program is to improve behavioral problems in children by providing therapy and training to parents in order to restore a level of competent, effective parenting and create greater family connectedness.

Impact: Youth in the PLL group had significantly greater reductions in conduct disorder problem behaviors compared with youth in the control group. Specifically, they had greater improvements in anxiety/depression, withdrawn/depression, social problems, attention problems, rule-breaking problems, aggressive behaviors, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems.

Partnering with Community Health Centers to Prevent Early Childhood Carries (ECC) (Boston, MA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Oral Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of this intervention was to involve pediatricians to help reduce rates of early childhood caries.

Impact: The multifaceted ECC intervention was associated with increased provider knowledge and counseling, and significantly attenuated incidence of ECC, showing that similar interventions could have the potential to make a significant public health impact on reducing ECC among young children.

Partnership for Health (California)

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

Goal: The goal of Partnership for Health is to reach HIV positive patients during regular doctor visits and increase their knowledge, skills, and motivations to practice safer sex.

Impact: Brief provider counseling emphasizing the negative consequences of unsafe sex can reduce HIV transmission behaviors in HIV-positive patients presenting with risky behavioral profiles.

Pasos Adelante (Arizona)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: Pasos Adelante is a lifestyle intervention that aims to prevent and control chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes in Mexican Americans by providing a supporting environment for improving nutrition and increasing walking activity in U.S.-Mexico border communities.

Pathways to Housing, Inc. (NYC, DC, Philadelphia)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Adults, Urban

Goal: The goal of Pathways to Housing, Inc. is to provide independent housing, treatment services for physical and mental health, and employment to mentally ill individuals who are chronically homeless.

Impact: Pathways to Housing has received numerous awards for its projects in New York City, Philadelphia, and D.C. In addition to achieving large effects in terms of housing outcomes, compared with standard care in the community, Housing First also improves community functioning and quality of life.

Patient and Physician Reminders to Promote Colorectal Cancer Screening (Massachusetts)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to increase colorectal cancer screening rates among older primary care patients.

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.