Promising Practices

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce substance abuse among adolescents.

Impact: Evaluations of LST showed significantly lower smoking, alcohol, and marijuana use 6 years after initial baseline assessment. Prevalence of use of these substances was 44% lower and weekly use of multiple drugs was 66% lower for those receiving LST than for the control students.

Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment

Goal: The goal of this program is to promote positive family relationships, help incarcerated fathers learn skills to be active and involved fathers, encourage incarcerated fathers to
provide financial support for their children, facilitate programs for offender families through community partnerships, and provide constructive opportunities for children to participate in special activities with their incarcerated father.

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

Goal: In this study, it was sought to examine whether home delivery of medically tailored meals or non-tailored food reduces the use of selected health care services and medical spending among Commonwealth Care Alliance members. Because there is knowingly an association between food insecurity and emergency room visits, it was hypothesized that the medically tailored meals would cause a reduction in ER visits and other costly healthcare services and expenditures.

Impact: Researchers estimate monthly net savings of $220 per participant for medically tailored meals and $10 per participant for the non-tailored food program. This study suggests that vulnerable patients, in this case, the dually eligible Medicaid and Medicare, can benefit from meal delivery programs.

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends depression care management at home for older adults with depression on the basis of strong evidence of effectiveness in improving short-term depression outcomes.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Adults, Urban

Goal: The goals of the Mental Health First Aid course are to: 1) learn to identify risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, 2) utilize evidence-based strategies to help someone in both crisis and non-crisis situations, and 3) become a resource in your community to guide people where to turn for help.

NAMI-DuPage's yearly goal is to complete 70 training courses per year.

Impact: Mental Health First Aid helps community members become aware of signs and symptoms of someone in a mental health crisis and become a resource to mental health and behavioral health programs in their community.

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends universal school-based cognitive behavioral therapy programs to prevent or reduce depression and anxiety symptoms among school-aged children and adolescents.
The CPSTF also recommends Targeted School-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Programs to Reduce Depression and Anxiety Symptoms for students who are assessed to be at increased risk for these conditions, and group and individual CBT to reduce psychological harm from traumatic events among children and adolescents.

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

Goal: The goals of this program are to establish a single application for school-based youth prevention programs; provide a common language and approach for parent, community, and student health programs; and reinforce prevention messages from a variety of sources.

Impact: Students who received the Michigan Model curriculum had significantly better health outcomes in several areas: social and emotional health, interpersonal skills, aggressive behavior, safety attitudes and skills, physical activity skills, nutrition behavior, drug refusal skills, recent alcohol and tobacco use, and intentions to use alcohol and smoke cigarettes.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana among adolescents.

Impact: Evaluations of the project showed that there was a smaller increase in students who intend to use cigarettes, alcohol, and tobacco within the upcoming months and that there were significant effects on the proportion of students reporting the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and tobacco.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children

Goal: The goal of the MEND program is to reduce obesity levels in children by offering free healthy living programs that aim to encourage small lifestyle changes that improve health.

Impact: The MEND program was successful in reducing waist circumferences and BMI scores while increasing cardiovascular fitness, physical activity, and self esteem in children placed within the intervention group. The results of this study suggest that the MEND program is a promising intervention to combat rising child obesity rates.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults

Goal: The objective of the study was to characterize the population of older adults on waiting lists for home-delivered meals and compare their health and health-related needs to the population of older adults living in the community.

Impact: Between baseline and follow-up, respondents receiving daily-delivered meals were more likely to exhibit:
• Improvement in mental health (i.e., anxiety)
• Improvement in self-rated health
• Reductions in the rate of falls
• Improvement in feelings of isolation and loneliness
• Decreases in worry about being able to remain in home