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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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The Duluth, Minnesota, Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) Advocacy Response (Duluth, MN)

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.

The Greene Community Health Foundation (Greene County, OH)

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

Goal: The mission of the Greene Community Health Foundation is to 1. help assist underserved GCCHD clients with funding for medical needs, 2. find avenues of funding for clients, 3. develop partnerships with providers for reduced charges for clients, 4. develop community partnerships to strengthen programs and projects at GCCHD, and 5. develop state and national partnerships to strengthen the programs and projects at GCCHD.

The SALUD Initiative (Santa Ana, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Physical Activity

Goal: The goal of the program is to restore open space and promote active living in the community.

Truant Recovery Program (Richmond, CA)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce truancy in West Contra Costa schools.

Volunteer Friends (Pasadena, CA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Transportation, Older Adults

Goal: The Beverly Foundation's mission is to foster new ideas and options to enhance mobility and transportation for today's and tomorrow's older population.

Walking School Bus (Cleveland, OH)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Transportation, Children

Goal: The goals of the Walking School Bus are to get children to be more physically active and to decrease crime on the way to and from schools.

West Nile Virus - Metropolitan Atlanta Surveillance Task Force (Atlanta, GA)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to create a regional approach to emerging infection based on public education, environmental monitoring, and disease surveillance.

WHACK the Flu (Berkeley, CA)

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

Goal: The goal of the WHACK the Flu project was to provide strategies for children to employ to reduce the transmission of communicable diseases to their families and other contacts.

Young Parents Program (Boston, MA)

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Young Parents Program is to help inner city teenage parents learn positive attitudes, behaviors, and parenting skills so that their children experience healthy growth and development a during their early and critical years.

Youth Together (Oakland)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Civic Engagement, Children, Urban

Goal: The mission of Youth Together is to develop the potential of youth to be critical thinkers, engaged community members, and social change agents in their schools and communities.

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.