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 Local, 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 Local, 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.
Filed under Local, Good Idea, Health / Older Adults, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults, Rural
Goal: To reduce the risk of falls among residents over 65 years of age through education in fall awareness and prevention.
Impact: After the program, participants spoke with healthcare providers regarding dizziness and medication side effects, scheduled overdue eye exams, and implemented home safety ideas to reduce the risk of falling.
Filed under Local, Good Idea, Health / Cancer, Adults, Rural
Goal: To get as many age appropriate people screened as possible in the community and to raise awareness about the life-saving practice of colorectal screening.
Impact: Many cancers have been found and many have been prevented. The population has expressed gratitude for this program and the partners (such as the pharmacies and the hospital lab) are proud to be part of it.
Filed under Local, Good Idea, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Adults, Women, Families
Goal: To improve the health and well-being of Kansans by working collaboratively to promote, protect and support breastfeeding.
Filed under Local, 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 Local, Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of TRICKs was to reach out to parents using a novel reminder system and increase immunization rates at the KU pediatric clinic.
Impact: There was a significant increase in immunization rate following the implementation of parent text reminders when compared to the initial immunization rate.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Children, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce public and worker exposure to secondhand smoke and to prevent youth initiation of tobacco.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among older adults.
Impact: Participants in the intervention group had significantly higher colorectal cancer screening attendance, as well as having more positive attitudes about screening and placing a higher priority on screening.
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.