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 Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Wellness & Lifestyle, Women, Men
Goal: The goal of Healthy Relationships is to reduce the risk of HIV transmission by people who know they are HIV-positive by reducing the frequency with which they have unprotected sex.
Impact: Healthy Relationships seeks to develop decision making and problem making skills to reduce the risk and transmission of HIV through behavioral intervention. An intervention study resulted in significantly less unprotected intercourse and greater condom use with lower estimated HIV rates post-intervention.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The mission of HAP is to assist middle school students in underserved areas with improving their grades, school attendance, test scores, and access to learning opportunities, leading to admission into top high schools in the Washington, DC area.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of Hip-Hop to Health Jr is to reduce gains in BMI in preschool minority children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Women
Goal: The intervention aimed to reduce sexual risk behaviors, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and pregnancy, and enhance mediators of HIV-preventive behaviors.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Urban
Goal: The goals of the Holistic Health Recovery Program are to promote health and improve quality of life of injection drug users.
Impact: Implementation of the program resulted in a decrease in addition severity, a decrease in risk behavior, and significant improvement in behavioral skills and quality of life.
Home Again: A Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Portland and Multnomah County (Portland and Multnomah County, OR)
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban
Goal: The goal of this program is to end homelessness in the City of Portland and Multnomah County by 2015. As efforts to end homelessness continue, city and county officials will focus on nine actions. Programs throughout the county will address moving people into Housing First, ending the practice of discharging people into homelessness from jails and hospitals, improving outreach, emphasizing permanent solutions, increasing the housing supply, creating new partnerships, improving the rent assistance system, increasing economic opportunity for homeless people and implementing new data collection technology.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families
Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent the unnecessary out-of-home placement of children through intensive, on-site intervention, and to teach families new problem-solving skills to prevent future crises.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women
Goal: The goal of Insights is to increase condom use among young women at risk for HIV and other STDs.
Impact: Insights proves that tailored cognitive/behavioral minimal self-help interventions hold promise as HIV/STD prevention strategies for diverse populations of young at-risk women.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Families
Goal: Interfaith Housing Alliance strengthens families, builds communities and promotes human dignity and economic justice by providing decent, affordable housing for those with lower incomes. Through education, advocacy and the creation of new jobs, they foster economic growth and overcome the effects of shelter poverty.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens
Goal: The goal of It's Your Game: Keep It Real is to reduce teen pregnancy, prevent STI transmission, and delay teen sexual activity in middle school students.
Impact: Participants in the It’s Your Game: Keep It Real intervention program were less likely to initiate sex by the ninth grade when compared to the control group.