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.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The Latino Commission on AIDS focuses its efforts on HIV/AIDS in the Latino community through health advocacy, promoting HIV education, developing model prevention programs for high-risk communities, and building capacity in community organization.
Impact: As the only provider of Spanish language HIV treatment, the Latino Commission on AIDS has created a model of public health that uses training, outreach, prevention and culturally sensitive care for Latinos living with HIV/AIDS.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The goal of the program is to identify and follow underserved adult residents with undiagnosed or untreated high blood pressure, cholesterol or glucose, provide education to encourage healthy lifestyle changes and encourage them to seek treatment – anyone without a primary care physician is referred to a participating FQHC.
Impact: Among those participants who were followed over time and were able to be reached by phone, there were significant increases in healthy food consumption as well as significant decreases in smoking, fat consumption, and fast food frequency.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Women, Men
Goal: Eliminate or reduce sexual transmission risk behavior and to improve coping with the combined stressors of HIV infection and child sexual abuse.
Impact: LIFT intervention participants reported significantly fewer counts of unprotected vaginal and anal intercourse with all partners (p < .001) and with HIV-negative or unknown serostatus partners (p < .001), compared to support group participants.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Adults
Goal: The goal of Maryland's Prevention Case Management program is to decrease HIV transmission following release from prison.
Medical Legal Partnerships: Embedding Civil Legal Aid Services in Care for High-Utilizing Patients (Lancaster, PA)
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Governance, Children, Teens, Adults, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the pilot was to assess the impact on health care use of addressing patients’ civil legal problems – the social, financial, or environmental problems that require assistance from lawyers to remedy. The lawyer was embedded in the health care team and present during case management discussions to identify specific civil legal problems and to help the team better understand how to address them. Additionally, this partnership provided civil legal aid services to patients when needed in a community health care system.
Impact: This pilot shows a medical-legal partnership for the super-utilizers of healthcare can lead to efficiencies within the health care system, reduce costs, and improve health outcomes among the most vulnerable patients.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The Minority AIDS Project's mission is to reduce suffering and deaths due to HIV infection in the African-American and Latino communities by making HIV/AIDS education and related health services available and accessible.
Impact: The Minority AIDS Project provides services and outreach efforts to predominantly African-American and Latino individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the underserved communities of Central and South Central Los Angeles.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Investment & Personal Finance
Goal: The goal of the program is to increase access to financial services for low-income families as well as stimulate economic development in distressed neighborhoods.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Transportation, Adults
Goal: The goal of the Oklahoma Billboard Control and Removal Program is to comply with the requirements of the Oklahoma Highway Beautification Act by removing non-permitted billboards and regulating the installation of new billboards.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Urban
Goal: The goal of Popular Opinion Leader is to reach as many people as possible in order to successfully and dramatically reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Adults
Goal: To eliminate or reduce sex risk behaviors and eliminate or reduce illicit drug use among HIV-positive clinic patients.