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.

Submit a Promising Practice

Boys and Girls Club Project Learn

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve the educational performance of economically disadvantaged adolescents.

Impact: After 30 months, program youths reported significantly greater enjoyment and engagement in reading, verbal skills, writing, and tutoring. They also had better overall averages in reading, spelling, history, science, social studies, and school attendance compared with comparison and control youths.

Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention of College Students (BASICS) (Seattle, WA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children, Teens

Goal: The aims of the BASICS program are 1) to reduce alcohol consumption and its adverse consequences, 2) to promote healthier choices among young adults, and 3) to provide important information and coping skills for risk reduction.

Impact: Students who received a brief individual preventive intervention had significantly greater reductions in negative consequences that persisted over a 4-year period than their control-group counterparts. For those individuals receiving the brief intervention, dependence symptoms were more likely to decrease and less likely to increase.

Campaign for a Clean, Safe and Habitable Community (Los Angeles, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban

Goal: The mission of this project is to improve the safety and living conditions for residents of Boyle Heights and to empower those residents to make positive changes in their communitites and their lives.

Cardiovascular Risk Management by Community Pharmacists (Iowa)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Adults, Rural

Goal: The goal of the Cardiovascular Risk Management by Community Pharmacists program is to reduce cardiovascular risk factors through pharmacist provided case management.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Breast Cancer Prevention & Control, Provider-Oriented Screening Interventions: Provider Reminder & Recall Systems (USA)

CDC

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

Goal: The goal of incorporating multicomponent interventions for cancer screenings is to increase breast cancer screenings in communities.

Impact: Multicomponent interventions that include strategies that reduce and address structural barriers increase cancer screening rates by the largest margins.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Environmental and Policy Approaches to Increase Physical Activity: Community-Scale Urban Design Land Use Policies (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Impact: Design and land use policies that encourage physical activity in urban areas can help increase overall physical activity in bikers and walkers.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Preventing Excessive Alcohol Consumption: Maintaining Limits on Hours of Sale (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Adults

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends limiting access to alcohol by regulating the hours it can be sold as they found that increasing the hours available for alcohol sale can result in an increase in alcohol consumption and alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Promoting Health Equity, Education Programs and Policies: Full-Day Kindergarten (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children

Goal: Children in low-income families often experience delays in language and other development by the age of three. Compensating for these delays before children begin regular schooling can be critical to providing them with equal opportunities for lifelong employment, income, and health.

Impact: Outcomes included self-confidence, ability to work or play with others, independence, and school attendance by the end of kindergarten or the beginning of first grade.

Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic (Oakland and San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alternative Medicine, Women, Urban

Goal: CMCC’s mission is to ensure more equitable access to the full range of evidence-based cancer treatments, programs and resources that could potentially benefit individuals diagnosed with cancer, allowing the women who come to our clinics to make informed choices about their health care and their lives.

Chemical Management Services (CMS) (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: The goal of the Chemical Management Services model is to reduce chemical use and cost, and to reduce the environmental impact of chemical use.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
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:

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.
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.
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.