Promising Practices

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Teens

Goal: Two of the goals for the Maryland's Tomorrow program are for all seniors to pass Maryland's state tests and graduate, and for all participating students to improve their grade point averages.

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation

Goal: The Click It or Ticket Campaign Enhancement and Evaluation project's goals were to:

-Increase safety belt use in Massachusetts; and
-Evaluate the impact of adding educational activities to standard enforcement mobilization waves.

Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: NFTE's mission is to motivate young people from low-income communities to stay in school, learn about entrepreneurship, and plan for successful futures.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to help teens quit smoking.

Impact: One study showed that the percentage of students who reportedly quit smoking 15 months after the intervention was higher for participants. Another study showed that a greater percentage of participants reported smoking cessation 5 months after the intervention than non-participants.

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: NFN's mission is to provide first-time parents with parenting information and education and connect them to services in the community.

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

Goal: The goal of the Options/Opciones Project is to reduce or eliminate risky sexual and drug use behaviors of HIV-infected patients.

Impact: The Options/Opciones Project shows that a clinician-delivered HIV prevention intervention targeting HIV-infected patients can result in reductions in unprotected sex and that interventions of this kind should be integrated into routine HIV clinical care.

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

Goal: The goal of Parent Connext is to support parents in reducing and/or preventing toxic stress in the family and help children develop critical life skills and coping skills. Recent studies have found that up to 50% of health outcomes are attributable to social and economic factors and that lifetime costs associated with child maltreatment are comparable to other costly healthcare conditions such as stroke or type 2 diabetes. Moreover, 4 in 5 physicians report lacking confidence in their ability to meet patients’ social needs, which can impede their ability to provide high quality medical care. As a result, interventions that target parents’ social needs may have important implications for reducing healthcare costs and have the added benefit of enabling physicians to provide high-quality care to their patients.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: The Goal of this Promising Practice is to determine whether a tailored community health worker (CHW) intervention would improve post-hospital outcomes among low-SES patients.

Impact: This intervention would improve access to primary care and quality of discharge while controlling recurrent readmissions in a high-risk population. Health systems may leverage the CHW workforce to improve post-hospital outcomes by addressing behavioral and socioeconomic drivers of disease.

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, Economy / Employment, Adults, Families

Goal: The goal of the PASS Program is to promote job retention and advancement among individuals leaving the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

Impact: The PASS program did not meet the goal of having its participants retain their initial jobs. However, PASS did result in PASS participants being more likely to find new jobs (occasionally with higher earnings) after having lost or moved on from previous jobs.