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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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Tomando Control de su Salud (Spanish Chronic Disease Self-Management Program) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: Tomando Control de su Salud is a group workshop that educates Latino individuals with chronic conditions on techniques to help them manage their health and maintain active and fulfilling lives.

Touchpoints (USA)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families

Goal: To strengthen families of young children and the systems of care that surround them so that all children will be successful early learners and have the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their cultural, socioeconomic, physical, psychological, emotional health, or environmental challenges.

Training Caregivers of Stroke Victims (England)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke

Goal: The goal of the training program is to provide skills essential for the daily management of stroke survivors.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Pittsburgh, PA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens

Goal: The goals of the center are to alleviate serious symptoms and promote healthy coping responses in traumatized children and their families.

Treatment Foster Care Oregon (Eugene, OR)

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

Goal: The goal of the TFCO program is to decrease problem behavior and to increase developmentally appropriate normative and prosocial behavior in children and adolescents who are in need of out-of-home placement.

Impact: When compared with the control group, TFCO youths spent 60% fewer days in incarceration, had significantly fewer subsequent arrests, and had significantly less hard-drug use.

Try This (New York, NY)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The goal of the Try This: Best Practices in Care for Older Adults series of assessment tools is to provide knowledge of best practices in the care of older adults that is:

- easily accessible
- easily understood
- easily implemented, and
- to encourage the use of these best practices by all direct care nurses

Urban Women Against Substance Abuse (Hartford, CT)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children, Women

Goal: The goal of UWASA is to teach girls to build their cultural and gender identity, discourage alcohol and drug use, promote HIV awareness, and explore possible career options.

Vaccinate Before You Graduate (Rhode Island)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens

Goal: The goal of Vaccinate Before You Graduate is to ensure that all high school students have a chance to be fully immunized before they graduate.

Vaccines for Children Program (United States)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: Vaccines for Children was designed to ensure that eligible children do not contract vaccine-preventable diseases because of inability to pay for vaccine.

Impact: Racial and ethnic disparities in vaccination coverage between non-Hispanic white children and children of other groups have declined for vaccines that have been recommended since 1995. By providing increased access, VFC has increased protection for all children from vaccine-preventable diseases.

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.