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, Children, Families, Rural
Goal: The goal of this program was to increase full DTaP series vaccination in Wilson County, Kansas.
Impact: Immunization completion rates increased from 70% to 82% after implementation.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The Emergency Room Intervention for Suicidal Adolescent Females focuses on changing the conceptualization of suicidal behavior and expectations for therapy, thereby increasing attendance at outpatient therapy and decreasing future suicide risk.
Impact: The intervention increases the likelihood of follow-up treatment in an outpatient clinic and reduces suicide risk among adolescent females who have visited an emergency room due to a suicide attempt.
Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Built Environment, Children, Teens, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: Making Connections for Mental Health and Wellbeing Among Men and Boys is a national initiative to transform community conditions that influence mental wellbeing. The Prevention Institute works with 13 communities across the U.S. to shift policies, practices, and norms to create greater opportunities for health and resilience, with particular focus on veterans and men and boys of color.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Adults, Families
Goal: The Even Start Literacy Program is an education program for economically challenged families that is designed to improve the academic achievement of young children and their parents, especially in the areas of reading and language.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Urban
Goal: The EDM program integrates asthma education into elementary school core curriculum with the intentions of raising asthma awareness and increasing asthma management knowledge.
Impact: The EDM program provides students the opportunity to increase knowledge and develop health literacy about asthma as well as expand the availability of resources for teachers.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Adults
Goal: The overall goal of the FAST program is to intervene early to help at-risk youth succeed in the community, at home, and in school and thus avoid problems such as adolescent delinquency, violence, addiction, and dropping out of school.
Impact: FAST has generally improved aggressive behaviors and increased positive behaviors amongst participants as reported by teachers and parents.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / Literacy, Families
Goal: The program's goal is to provide school readiness activities for families with children, from birth to five years old, who live in isolated and under-served areas of Marin County.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy / Poverty, Adults, Women, Men, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Family Peer Support program is to increase family economic and social self-sufficiency, and to connect parents to needed physical health, behavior health, and educational resources for their child. Family peer support programs generally focus on fostering encouragement of personal responsibility and self-determination, improving family health and wellness, and supporting engagement and communication with providers and systems of care. Research shows that peer support programs promote empowerment and self-esteem, self-management, engagement and social inclusion, as well as improving the social networks of families who receive these services. Research evidence qualifies peer support services as evidence-based through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality guidelines.
Salzer MS, Schwenk E, Brusilovskiy E: Certified peer specialist roles and activities: results from a national survey. Psychiatric Services 61:520–523, 2010.
Repper J, Carter T: A review of the literature on peer support in mental health services. Journal of Mental Health 20: 392–411, 2011.
Cook JA: Peer-delivered wellness recovery services: from evidence to widespread implementation. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 35:87–89, 2011
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children
Goal: To improve children's nutritional status, increase their activity level, enhance their self-esteem, and create life-long health habits by using a multidisciplinary, community- and family-based system approach, and by engaging local health care professionals with community agencies.
Impact: The Fit Kids/Fit Families program shows that multidisciplinary, community- and family-based approaches to children's exercise, weight, & nutrition can have an effect on healthier nutritional choices, increased physical activity, decreased sedentary activity, healthier behaviors, and BMI reductions.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Urban
Goal: The goals of the projects were to:
- Provide uninterrupted service;
- Develop a strategy to minimize or eliminate future wastewater rate increases resulting from higher power supply costs;
- Build self-sufficiency and local control over longterm energy supplies;
- Help improve electric generation for the benefit of the IEUA service area (e.g., municipal power Joint Power arrangements with the cities); and
- Assist the region and California in meeting its energy needs.