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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.

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G-House: Housing for Transition-Aged Youth 18-24 (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To assist homeless transition-aged youth in building the skills necessary to secure and flourish in a stable and independent living situation.

Halloway House (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Urban

Goal: To provide temporary housing to former foster youth between the ages 18 and 24 and to help them become independent adults.

Lark-Inn (San Francisco, CA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: To provide a temporary and safe housing solution to homeless adolescents and young adults aged 18-24.

Migrant Health Promotion (USA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Rural

Goal: The mission of Migrant Health Promotion is to strengthen the capacity of farmworker and migrant families to live healthy lives within healthy communities.

Nonpoint Source Pollution Partnership (USA)

Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants

Goal: The goal of this program is to maintain and restore water quality in the face of threats and impairments caused by nonpoint source pollution.

Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative (Northwest Lower Michigan)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Diabetes, Children, Teens, Adults, Rural

Goal: The overall goal is to reduce the prevalence of diabetes and improve the care of people with diabetes.

Parenting With Love and Limits (Savannah, GA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Families

Goal: The goal of the Parenting with Love and Limits® (PLL) program is to improve behavioral problems in children by providing therapy and training to parents in order to restore a level of competent, effective parenting and create greater family connectedness.

Impact: Youth in the PLL group had significantly greater reductions in conduct disorder problem behaviors compared with youth in the control group. Specifically, they had greater improvements in anxiety/depression, withdrawn/depression, social problems, attention problems, rule-breaking problems, aggressive behaviors, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems.

Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Community & Business Resources

Goal: The goal of the Fresh Food Financing Initiative is to remove financing obstacles and operating barriers for supermarkets in poor communities, stimulate investment of private capital in low-wealth communities, create jobs, prepare and retain a qualified workforce, and reduce diet-related diseases by providing healthy food.

Women to Women

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women, Rural

Goal: Women to Women aims to provide social support for chronically ill rural women to positively affect social support, self-esteem, empowerment, self-efficacy in order to decrease stress, depression, and loneliness to improve one’s adaptation to living with a chronic disease.

The overall goal of WTW is to use technology to enhance the potential for rural women to more successfully adapt to their chronic illnesses through computer-based support and education research by providing support groups and health education via the Internet.

Impact: The WTW project shows that computer-based interventions can result in improved self-esteem, social support, and empowerment among rural women with chronic illness.

Access to Transportation and Health Care Visits for Medicaid Enrollees With Diabetes

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: The goal of the study was to evaluate the association between Medicaid‐provided nonemergency medical transportation and diabetes care visits.

Impact: The findings of this study underscore the importance of ensuring transportation to Medicaid populations with diabetes, particularly in the rural areas where the prevalence of diabetes and complications are higher and the availability of medical resources lower than in the urban areas.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.