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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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CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Cancer Prevention & Control, Client-Oriented Screening Interventions: Reducing Out-of-Pocket Costs: Cervical Cancer (USA)

CDC

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

Goal: The goal of the interventions is to reduce client out-of-pocket costs to minimize or remove economic barriers that make it difficult for clients to access cancer screening services.

Impact: Consistently favorable results for interventions that reduce costs for breast cancer screening and several other preventive services suggest that such interventions are likely to be effective for increasing cervical cancer screening as well.

Childhood Matters/Nuestro Niños (Northern California)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Families

Goal: The programs’ mission is to inform and inspire parents and all who care about children so that every child may be happy, healthy, and thrive.

Coping Power Program

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Families

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce aggressive behavior and delinquency in children by applying the contextual sociocognitive model.

Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) (Washington)

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families

Goal: ECEAP is a community-based, family-focused, comprehensive, pre-kindergarten program designed to help children and their families who are in poverty. The program focuses on helping three- and four-year-olds prepare for and succeed in school while helping their parents progress toward self-sufficiency.

Elizabeth River Project (Virginia)

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

Goal: To restore the Elizabeth River to the highest practical level of environmental quality through government, business and community partnerships.

Family Place Libraries™ (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Teens

Goal: The mission of Family Place Libraries™ is to increase the capacity of libraries throughout the nation to recognize and realize their full potential as community hubs for healthy child and family development, parent and community involvement and lifelong learning beginning at birth.

Flex Your Power Case Study: City of Pasadena (Pasadena, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Energy & Sustainability, Urban

Goal: The goal of these programs was to encourage energy conservation in the public and private sectors.

Healthy Families New York (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: The goals of HFNY are to promote positive parent-child interaction; to ensure optimal pre-natal care; to promote healthy childhood growth and development; and to enhance family functioning.

Impact: Mothers participating in the HFNY study were significantly less likely to deliver low-birth-weight babies than mothers in the control group (3.3% vs 8.3%). HFNY parents also reported having engaged in significantly fewer acts of serious abuse and neglect.

Help Me Grow: National

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The mission of the Help Me Grow National Center is to enable and support the building of HMG systems across the country so that states can implement effective, universal, early surveillance and screening for all children and link those at risk for developmental and behavioral problems to appropriate programs and services.

HMG National supports affiliate states by:

Promoting development and expansion of a national network of states that are building HMG systems

Providing technical assistance to help states implement the core components and structural requirements of HMG

Informing the public discourse on the crucial importance of optimal child development

Ultimately, HMG National's goal is for all families to have knowledge of and easy access to statewide systems that support them in learning about their children's developmental needs and finding appropriate services.

In Our Own Back Yard (Sonoma, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Children

Goal: The goal of the In Our Own Back Yard program is to cultivate connection to, comfort in, and informed appreciation of the outdoors among participants.

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.
Michigan Health Improvement Alliance