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 / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens, Families
Goal: The mission of the Healthy Kids Express Asthma Program is to provide quality asthma care and education to children with asthma and their caretakers in a school environment to work towards goals set by Healthy People 2020 and the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP).
Impact: The Healthy Kids Express Asthma Program serves approximately 600 children a year, improving inhaler technique and asthma knowledge among participants. Children enrolled in the program for two consecutive years have lower school absentee rates and hospitalizations due to asthma.
Home-Delivered Meals Postdischarge From Heart Failure Hospitalization (GOURMET-HF) (Columbia University Medical Center, the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Health System, and the University of Michigan Health System)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults
Goal: The goals of GOURMET-HF are to assess the safety of the intervention, including effects on cardiac biomarkers and rehospitalization burden.
Impact: Home-delivered DASH/SRD after HF hospitalization appear safe in selected patients and had favorable effects on HF clinical status and 30-day readmissions. The GOURMET-HF pilot study suggests that postdischarge nutritional support has the potential to improve HF symptoms and reduce readmissions
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children
Goal: The goal of the program is to provide elementary schools with a low-cost, non-invasive curriculum to educate elementary school children on how to read nutrition labels, differentiate between marketing versus reality, and select healthier food options.
Impact: Nutrition Detectives shows that a low-cost, non-invasive educational program based around downloadable videos, presentations, and materials can improve young students' and their parents' ability to make healthier food and nutrition choices.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Urban
Goal: The mission of Safety Street is to increase injury prevention knowledge for children through interactive teaching of pedestrian, home, and vehicle safety.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: Kansas’s Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success (Step It Up) Project aims to work towards making improvements to policies and practices in child care programs with regard to breastfeeding, child nutrition, physical activity, outdoor learning, and reductions in screen time. Step It Up is an extension of the National Early Care and Education Learning Collaboratives Project (ECELC) and uses a similar learning collaborative model.
Impact: Step It Up: Taking Steps to Healthy Success has made great improvements in promoting healthy eating and physical activity. The topics of Child Nutrition and Infant & Child Physical Activity had the highest number of increases in best practices. Breastfeeding & Infant Feeding had the highest percentage of best practices being met at pre-assessment (55%).
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Adults, Women, Rural
Goal: The goal of Strong Women – Healthy Hearts is to decrease cardiovascular disease among middle-aged women through behavioral changes in diet and physical activity.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Wellness & Lifestyle, Children, Families
Goal: The Healthy Lifestyles Initiative works to integrate efforts to increase the proportion of Kansas City children and their families practicing healthy behaviors at a healthy weight.
Impact: Collaboration among multiple agencies across public and private sectors resulted in reaching almost 1 million people in the Kansas City area. Healthy weight assessments and plans received at primary care clinics are helping to promote healthy eating and living among children and their families.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Rural
Goal: The Unused Medications Repository, administered by Community Health Center of Southeast
Kansas, provides donated medications free of charge to eligible clinics in Kansas.
Impact: Over $20 million worth of prescription medications have been donated to low-income and uninsured Kansans.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Women, Families
Goal: The goal of the WIC Community Garden is to educate, empower and feed the families in the Kansas WIC program, creating a healthier community.
Impact: In a three-month period, 356.8 pounds of fresh vegetables were given to WIC families.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The program's primary goal is to prepare the Harvey County community for a disaster. It also seeks to increase outreach to minority communities and recruit volunteers for the MRC.