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 / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The main goals of the program are to prevent adolescent non-users from experimenting with drugs and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users.
Impact: Project Alert participants were 30% less likely than other students to begin using marijuana and analyses showed that the program significantly dampened pro-drug beliefs about cigarette and marijuana use.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens
Goal: To reduce violence among adolescents and young adults living in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and violence in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Employment, Adults
Goal: Clothing & Connections' mission is to provide interview and career clothing, information, and referrals to clients in need as they pursue new opportunities for advancement in self-sufficiency. Clients are referred to Clothing & Connections by a group of non-profit member organizations, which include homeless shelters, domestic violence centers, job training programs, and self-sufficiency programs. Clients are fitted with clothing specific to the job they are applying for. In addition, Clothing & Connections offers mini-seminars on topics such as preparing for the job interview, making a positive first impression, and dressing for success on a limited budget.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Adults, Families
Goal: The mission of Reach Out and Read is to help prepare young children to succeed in school, by partnering with physicians to encouraging parents and children to read aloud together.
Impact: Reach Out and Read improves children's language development by 3-6 months and improves language ability with increased exposure to the program.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children, Adults, Families, Urban
Goal: Reach Out and Read prepares America's youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with doctors to encourage families
to read together.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens
Goal: The goal of ReachOut Central (ROC) is to improve mental health among young people through an online gaming service by teaching them the practical coping skills for dealing with major stressors in life, ranging from issues such as alcohol use to psychological distress.
Impact: The aggregate results of this statistical analysis point to ReachOut Central's potential to impact and improve certain factors, such as coping ability, but also to relatively unexplored gender-dependent outcomes for other factors like alcohol consumption.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Governance, Children
Goal: The goal of requiring that all Connecticut children receive at least 1 dose of influenza vaccine each year to attend a licensed child care program and preschool setting is to reduce influenza transmission and decrease influenza-associated hospitalizations statewide.
Impact: Requiring vaccination for admission into a licensed child care program or preschool program has helped to increase vaccination rates among children in Connecticut and reduced serious morbidity from influenza statewide.
Filed under Good Idea, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants
Goal: The Rhode Island process builds on a recent agreement among all the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers to reduce greenhouse gases in the region to 1990 levels by 2010, 10% below those levels in 2020, and by as much as 75% over the longer-term.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Energy & Sustainability, Adults, Rural
Goal: The goal of the Rural Energy for America Program is to increase clean energy production, efficiency savings, economic activity, and new jobs in rural areas.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: Safe Streets/Strong Communities is a community-based organization that campaigns for a new criminal justice system in New Orleans, one that creates safe streets and strong communities for everyone, regardless of race or economic status.