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, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Families
Goal: The goal of BSFT is to improve a youth's behavior problems by improving family interactions that are presumed to be directly related to the child's symptoms, thus reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors for adolescent drug abuse and other conduct problems.
Impact: Adolescents who participated in BSFT showed a significantly greater reduction in conduct problems than adolescents in the comparison condition, who received a participatory-learning group intervention. BSFT participants also showed a significantly greater reduction in socialized aggression.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Children, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the Child Development-Community Policing Program (CDCP) is to reduce the negative consequences of exposure to violent and potentially traumatic events among children and their families.
Impact: The CDCP Program shows that through community policing efforts, it is possible to successfully intervene early in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of children's exposure to violence.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Children's Health, Teens, Adults
Goal: The goal of this project is to achieve high rates of identification of new HIV infection and to decrease the spread of HIV among youth in metropolitan DC, which is severely affected by the epidemic.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Families
Goal: The Healthy Neighborhoods program seeks to reduce housing related illness and injury through prevention and education.
Impact: In the past five years, the HNP visited 31,000 homes with 85,000 residents, and provided the asthma intervention to 11,000 adults and children with asthma. The assessments created a valuable data set about the health effects of housing hazards.
Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Housing & Homes, Adults, Families, Urban
Goal: Come Home Baltimore is an initiative to develop "better than new" market rate housing and foster forward thinking and grassroots social change towards sustainable community development.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment
Goal: The overall mission of the Civano Community is:
- To create a sense of place that fosters community and connects people to one another and their natural environments
- To tread lighter on the land through innovative design, and
- To introduce sustainable construction materials and new technologies to advance the quality of life.
Specific performance targets include:
- Reduce energy consumption by 75%
- Reduce potable water consumption by 65%
- Reduce landfill-destined solid waste by 90%
- Reduce internal vehicle trip miles by 40%, and
- Create one community job for every 2 residences.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve outcomes among Community College students who are on academic probation.
Impact: Enhanced Opening Doors helps low-income students earn college credentials as the pathway to better jobs and further education.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens, Rural
Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent substance abuse among youth.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Food Safety, Children, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the Fight BAC! campaign is to educate the public about four basic practices - clean, separate, cook and chill - that reduce the risk of foodborne illness.
Impact: The study showed that culturally competent, social marketing campaigns are likely to improve awareness, knowledge, and attitudes around food safety among Latino consumers.