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 / Adolescent Health, Children, Teens, Families
Goal: The goal of Communities That Care is to mobilize communities to prevent future substance abuse by reducing risk factors for children between the ages of 10 and 14.
Impact: Communities That Care reduces initiation of substance abuse behaviors in youth aged 10-14.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Adults
Goal: The goal of the program is to make a positive difference in the lives of children, primarily through professionally guided one-to-one relationships with caring adults, and to assist them in achieving their highest potential, as they grow to become confident, competent and caring individuals.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation
Goal: The goal of this program is to provide affordable, reliable, and flexible transportation to low-income residents of Burlington.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Children, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the Diabetes-Based Science Education for Tribal Schools (DETS) curriculum is to slow or reverse the rising rate of type 2 diabetes in American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) youth through a pedagogy based in a combination of a science-based diabetes/health education curriculum and culturally relevant contexts.
Impact: Overall, the DETS curriculum shows that collaboratively-developed curriculums and education courses can have an effective impact across grade levels with students having significant knowledge gains, and can also serve as a supplement for other science and social science curriculums in schools.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of this peer-education intervention is to reduce injection risk behaviors for HIV and hepatitis C virus infection in young injection drug users.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity
Goal: To reverse the rising tide of obesity and chronic disease among North Carolinians by helping them to eat smart, move more and achieve a healthy weight.
Impact: ESMMWL teaches healthy lifestyle behaviors surround diet and exercise so that participants may incorporate them into their lives in a sustained manner and sustain weight loss.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The Emergency Room Intervention for Suicidal Adolescent Females focuses on changing the conceptualization of suicidal behavior and expectations for therapy, thereby increasing attendance at outpatient therapy and decreasing future suicide risk.
Impact: The intervention increases the likelihood of follow-up treatment in an outpatient clinic and reduces suicide risk among adolescent females who have visited an emergency room due to a suicide attempt.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: The goal of EnhanceWellness is to improve the health and functioning of older adults.
Goal: In this particular instance, the goal of the Undoing Racism Workshops was to enhance the capacity of the Michigan Department of Community Health's Bureau of Family, Maternal & Child Health to reduce racial disparities in infant mortality.
Impact: The Undoing Racism workshop helped to increase competency in the following topics:
-Racial prejudice and racism
-Racial privilege and power
-Institutional, cultural, and internalized racism
-Instiutional norms and practices
-Racial health disparities
-Social determinants of racial health disparities
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: To create a culturally appropriate healthy lifestyle educational program for Latino adolescents at highest risk for Type 2 Diabetes.
Impact: The promising findings of this program suggest that a community-based diabetes prevention program for obese Latino youth is a feasible strategy for improving health in this high-risk population.