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, 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.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens
Goal: The Penn Resiliency Program is a depression prevention program that seeks to reduce the longevity of symptoms exhibited and the severity of symptoms at onset of depression, through cognitive-behavioral therapy and problem-solving techniques.
Impact: The Penn Resiliency program shows that a group-based program seeking to prevent the initial onset of and decrease the exacerbation of depression children and teens by incorporating specific coping and problem-solving skills can reduce depressive symptoms over time.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Phoenix Healthy Homes project was to use a multi-factorial approach to reduce hazard prevalence and improve self-reports of home safety and respiratory health.
Impact: The Phoenix Healthy Homes project showed that a tailored healthy homes improvement package significantly improves self-reported respiratory health and safety, reduces respiratory health and injury hazards, and can be implemented in concert with a mobile clinical setting.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of Planet Health is to reduce childhood obesity among middle school students using a school-based interdisciplinary intervention focused on decreasing television viewing and consumption of high-fat foods, and increasing fruit and vegetable intake and moderate and vigorous physical activity.
Impact: These results cumulatively show that Planet Health and similar programs can reduce obesity and increase healthy food consumption in girls. They also show that a finding of a reduction in number of hours watching TV for girls can also predict reduction in obesity.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Community AIDS Prevention Program is to educate inner city Latino adolescents about how to reduce risk related to HIV/AIDS, and to encourage sexually active teens to use condoms.
Impact: This program shows that prevention programs targeting HIV/AIDS risk-reduction strategies and condom use encouragement can delay male initiation of sexual intercourse, reduce females' number of sexual partners, and increase likelihood of possessing a condom among sexually active youth.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation, Urban
Goal: The goal of SmartTrips is to reduce drive-alone trips and increase biking, walking, and public transit in targeted areas of the city.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens
Goal: The long-term goals of the program are to arrest the development of teen antisocial behaviors and drug experimentation. Intermediate goals are to improve parents' family management and communication skills.
Impact: Parents had improved feelings toward their children and were less likely to react negatively to their children's behavior and less likely to take a "lax" approach to their children after participating in the program. They also showed improvements in the skill areas of tracking and reinforcing behavior, setting expectations and defining problems, and remaining calm in stressful situations. Antisocial behaviors in their children decreased significantly, measures of child adjustment showed improvement, and total problem behavior decreased. Furthermore, the PFS intervention resulted in significantly less use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve the individual oral hygiene practices of the prenatal women in order to reduce the number of low birth weight, pre-term infants born to this population.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women, Urban
Goal: The overall goal of the Prenatal Plus Program, combined with the Partners for a Healthy Baby curriculum, is to improve birth outcomes, decrease rates of child abuse and neglect, and strengthen families.
Impact: Reduced low birth weight rate through risk reduction during pregnancy.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and to decrease violence and weapons-carrying among high school students.
Impact: At 2-year follow-up, students in Project TND schools were about half as likely to use tobacco when compared with students in control schools. Students in Project TND schools were about one-fifth as likely to use hard drugs relative to similar students in control schools.