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, Health / Cancer, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among older adults.
Impact: Participants in the intervention group had significantly higher colorectal cancer screening attendance, as well as having more positive attitudes about screening and placing a higher priority on screening.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Urban
Goal: Insite’s mission is to provide a safe environment for people to inject drugs and thus reduce injecting activity in public while linking drug users to health care services such as primary care, addiction counseling and treatment.
Impact: Opening supervised injected facilities have resulted in significant reductions in public injection drug use related issues and increase in referrals to social services and detoxification programs in Vancouver.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The program aimed to increase the rate of cervical cancer screening in Chinese women living in North America in response to research findings of significantly lower cervical cancer screening rates in Chinese women.
Impact: This intervention program found that women who received an intervention had cervical cancer screenings at a higher rate than those who did not receive any intervention. This shows that culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions might help improve Pap testing rates among Chinese women.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Public Safety, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to raise awareness of the proper position of car head rests, and to encourage drivers to adjust their head rest to the appropriate height.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Adults
Goal: To reduce and prevent falls in people with osteoporosis and osteopenia through exercise and education.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: The goal of the Community Dental Facilitator Project is to facilitate access to oral health services among low income, urban children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Families
Goal: The Healthy Neighborhoods program seeks to reduce housing related illness and injury through prevention and education.
Impact: In the past five years, the HNP visited 31,000 homes with 85,000 residents, and provided the asthma intervention to 11,000 adults and children with asthma. The assessments created a valuable data set about the health effects of housing hazards.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: The goal of IMPACT DC is to improve access to asthma education and care coordination through the emergency department.
CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Preventing Excessive Alcohol Consumption: Maintaining Limits on Days of Sale (USA)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Adults
Impact: In order to prevent excessive alcoholism and related harms, the Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends supporting existing limits on days in which alcoholic beverages may be sold.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Urban
Goal: It is the mission of the Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA) to promote and enforce the highest quality regulatory standards for delivering services related to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATOD) addictions; to prevent ATOD addictions; and to identify, treat and rehabilitate persons who are addicted giving priority to residents of the District of Columbia.