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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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Chain Restaurant Menu Labeling Law (Multnomah Country Oregon)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity

Goal: To enable consumers to make healthier choices when ordering food at chain restaurants.

Children and Neighbors Defeat Obesity (CAN DO) Houston (Houston, Texas)

Filed under Good Idea, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of CAN DO Houston is to prevent childhood obesity in the Houston area by facilitating programs that encourage good nutrition, physical activity, and healthy minds.

Clinician-Based Cognitive Psychoeducational Intervention for Families (Family Talk)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to provide information about mood disorders to parents, equip parents with skills they need to communicate this information to their children, and open dialogue in families about the effects of parental depression.

Impact: Parents in the program scored better in their reports of child-related behavior and attitude changes of parental illness than parents who received a group-format presentation. Children in the program scored higher on measures of improved understanding of parental mood disorder than children who received a group-format lecture.

Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to relieve symptoms of PTSD, depression, and general anxiety among children exposed to trauma.

Impact: Studies have found significant reductions in PTSD and depression symptoms for treatment children in CBITS when compared with a control group. Additionally, the program demonstrated effectiveness at reducing parent-reported psychosocial dysfunction among participating children.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Late-Life Depression

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression in older adults.

Impact: Research has shown that behavioral cognitive therapy helped patients reduce their depression symptoms, and maintained this improvement at 1-year follow-up more effectively than other types of therapy. At 6-month follow-up, clients who completed CBT were less likely to meet criteria for diagnoses of depression than clients who completed treatment as usual.

Cool Kids (Australia)

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

Goal: To teach children and parents how to manage anxiety disorders.

Coping Cat

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to help children recognize and deal with anxiety.

Impact: Studies have found that participants in the Coping Cat program show significant reductions in anxiety and fear, improvements in ability to cope with dreaded situations, and a reduction in the frequency of negative thoughts during the week.

Coping Power Program

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce aggressive behavior and delinquency in children by applying the contextual sociocognitive model.

Cultivando la Salud (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of Cultivando la Salud is to increase breast and cervical cancer screening among low-income Hispanic women.

Diabetes-Based Science Education for Tribal Schools (DETS) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Diabetes, Children, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: The goal of the Diabetes-Based Science Education for Tribal Schools (DETS) curriculum is to slow or reverse the rising rate of type 2 diabetes in American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) youth through a pedagogy based in a combination of a science-based diabetes/health education curriculum and culturally relevant contexts.

Impact: Overall, the DETS curriculum shows that collaboratively-developed curriculums and education courses can have an effective impact across grade levels with students having significant knowledge gains, and can also serve as a supplement for other science and social science curriculums in schools.

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.