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.

Submit a Promising Practice

Washington's WorkFirst Program (Washington)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Government Assistance

Goal: The goal of this program is to help individuals move toward self-sufficiency.

Web-Based Committed Quitters Stop Smoking Plan

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

Goal: To increase the abstinence rate of smokers over the age of 18 through a supplemental, online, tailored smoking cessation program.

Impact: The Committed Quitters Stop Smoking Plan has been successful at increasing the abstinence rate for smokers enrolled in the plan. Abstinence was higher for enrollees of the plan after 28 days and after 10-weeks.

Wellness Initiative for Senior Education (WISE) (New Jersey)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health, Older Adults

Goal: The WISE Program is a wellness and prevention program targeting older adults, which is designed to help them celebrate healthy aging, make healthy lifestyle choices and avoid substance abuse.

Winning With Wellness (Tennessee)

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

Goal: The goal of the Winning With Wellness (WWW) project is to promote physical activity and healthier eating habits in order to reduce and prevent childhood obesity.

Impact: School wellness programs that are acceptable to teachers and utilize some already existing resources can create impact for rural youth by improving nutrition offerings in school and increasing physical activity during the school day.

With All Families: Parents (Hamilton County, OH)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Adults, Women, Men, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of With All Families: Parents is to support pediatric care visits and improve child welfare by using screening tools and individual parent coaching to identify and address social determinants of health. Specific program objectives are to improve family functioning generally while specifically focusing on improving protective factors and economic-self-sufficiency. As part of the program, staff also work with families to increase parent concrete support and connect parents to needed physical health, behavior health, and educational resources for their child.

Research supports the benefits of using the strategies employed by With All Families: Parents (i.e., screening, resource navigation, and parent coaching) to improve family welfare by addressing underlying risk factors related to poverty and access to resources. For example, programs designed to provide screening and resource navigation support are associated with reduced social needs, improved child health and decreased child hospitalization visits. In light of evidence suggesting that social factors may in fact play a larger role in determining one’s health than medical care, programs that target these social factors, such as With All Families: Parents, are becoming increasingly important.

References
Garg, A., Toy, S., Tripodis, Y., Silverstein, M., & Freeman, E. (2015). Addressing social determinants of health at well child care visits: a cluster RCT. Pediatrics, 135(2), e296-e304.

Gottlieb, L. M., Hessler, D., Long, D., Laves, E., Burns, A. R., Amaya, A., ... & Adler, N. E. (2016). Effects of social needs screening and in-person service navigation on child health: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA pediatrics, 170(11), e162521-e162521.

Pantell, M. S., Hessler, D., Long, D., Alqassari, M., Schudel, C., Laves, E., ... & Gottlieb, L. M. (2020). Effects of in-person navigation to address family social needs on child health care utilization: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA network open, 3(6), e206445-e206445.

Braveman, P., & Gottlieb, L. (2014). The social determinants of health: it's time to consider the causes of the causes. Public health reports, 129(1_suppl2), 19-31.

Women Involved in Life Learning from Other Women (WILLOW) (various cities in Alabama and Georgia)

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

Goal: The goal of the WILLOW intervention is to provide women living with HIV/AIDS with the skills and education needed to support safer sexual decisions.

Impact: The WILLOW program succeeded in reducing the number of reported episodes of unprotected vaginal intercourse, increasing the use of condoms and condom self-efficacy, decreasing the incidence of bacterial infections (chlamydia and gonorrhea), and improving HIV knowledge.

Worcester Area Trial for Counseling in Hyperlipidemia (WATCH) (Massachusetts)

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

Goal: To decrease total and saturated fat intake, serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, and body weight.

Impact: The dietitian-delivered intervention effectively improved the care of patients with hyperlipidemia.

Working toward Wellness (Rhode Island)

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

Goal: The goal of the Working toward Wellness program was to encourage depressed parents who were receiving Medicaid to seek treatment from a mental health professional.

Impact: The Working toward Wellness program succeeded in increasing the likelihood that depressed Medicaid parents sought mental health services, particularly among the Hispanic population.

Year Up

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy, Adults

Goal: Year Up's mission is to close the Opportunity Divide by ensuring that young adults gain the skills, experiences, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through careers and higher education.

Impact: These approaches tend to be intensive and comprehensive, address psycho-social skills as well as occupation-specific competencies, provide opportunities for work-based learning, engage employers, incorporate evidence-based practices, and emphasize continuous improvement.

Youth Fit for Life (Atlanta, GA)

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

Goal: Youth Fit for Life aims to increase physical activity among children enrolled in after-school care programs.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

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

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.
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.
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.