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 Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of Shape Up Somerville is to prevent obesity through a community-based environmental change intervention.
Impact: Through multi-level social interventions (community, school, family) intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and screen time can decrease among children.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation, Children, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Springfield Safe Communities project was to reduce the number of alcohol-related traffic crash fatalities, and to increase seat belt use throughout the city and surrounding areas.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: Kansas’s Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success (Step It Up) Project aims to work towards making improvements to policies and practices in child care programs with regard to breastfeeding, child nutrition, physical activity, outdoor learning, and reductions in screen time. Step It Up is an extension of the National Early Care and Education Learning Collaboratives Project (ECELC) and uses a similar learning collaborative model.
Impact: Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success has made great improvements in promoting healthy eating and physical activity. The topics of Child Nutrition and Infant & Child Physical Activity had the highest number of increases in best practices. Breastfeeding & Infant Feeding had the highest percentage of best practices being met at pre-assessment (55%).
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Diabetes, Older Adults, Urban
Goal: The goal of the “Tai Chi for Diabetes” program was to improve health-related outcomes for
individuals diagnosed with type II diabetes in areas of mobility and physical function.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Women's Health, Women
Goal: The goal of the Targeted Outreach for Pregnant Women Act is to improve prenatal care among high risk and HIV-positive pregnant women in order to reduce the number of babies born with HIV-infection and prenatal drug exposure.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use
Goal: The goal of this program is to maximize the impact of anti-tobacco education by combining resources across the campus, church, and community.
The Character Effect: A Universal Social-Emotional Learning Program for Elementary School Students (Greater Cincinnati Area (SW OH, Northern KY))
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education, Children, Urban
Goal: The goal of The Character Effect is to foster the development of students’ social-emotional skills, improving their behavior and readiness to learn in the classroom.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Diabetes, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The Diabetes Collaborative is a comprehensive, sustainable and evidence-based model of care developed to combat the health problems associated with diabetes.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Families
Goal: The mission of DAIP is to provide advocacy on behalf of battered women. DAIP staff provide information and assess the women's safety regardless of the situation, but they also offer advocacy at three key time periods: immediately after police intervention and arrest, throughout the court proceedings, and after case disposition. The advocates offer support and information about available community resources, explain the criminal court process, describe the civil court remedies available, and obtain information from the women in order to serve as their liaisons to the legal system and to ascertain the level of danger that each woman is in.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: To create a place for the citizens of Boyle Heights, CA to exercise which is safe and easy to access and thus promotes regular physical activity.