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 / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: To use tai chi exercise to improve balance and decrease incidence of falls among older adults.
Impact: The program shows that ta chi can significantly improve health-related outcome measures in older adults and such a program can be practically and effectively implemented and maintained in community settings.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity
Goal: To enable consumers to make healthier choices when ordering food at chain restaurants.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of cooperative learning is to establish positive interdependence among students. When positive interdependence is established in group learning situations, the quality of peer interaction improves. Instead of competing with or ignoring one another, students are more likely to promote the success of one another through mutual assistance, emotional support, and the sharing of ideas or resources. These positive social interactions, in turn, encourage greater social acceptance and the development of positive relationships among students and, in educational contexts, promote greater academic motivation and achievement (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005). In fact, research on social interaction suggests that gains in social skills alone are insufficient to reduce social problems among students and encourage more positive peer relations. Only positive interdependence, and the subsequent positive social interactions that arise from it, can motivate youth to re-evaluate previous conclusions regarding the social desirability of others (Bierman, 2004).
Impact: Cooperative learning can have positive effects on adolescent bullying, alcohol use, and tobacco use.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent depression and other mood disorders in adolescents.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Disabilities, Teens
Goal: The project goals included sensitizing professionals-in-training to core areas of health promotion for teens with disabilities and increasing professionals' competence in understanding the issues and addressing the needs of teens or referring teens to appropriate resources.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health
Goal: To assess the impact of affordable housing on health care outcomes in a low-income population who have experienced housing instability.
Impact: Costs to health care systems were lower after people moved into affordable housing. Primary care visits went up after move-in; emergency department visits went down. Residents reported that access to care and quality of care improved after moving into housing.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment
Goal: The goal of this program is to promote active people in active neighborhoods
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children
Goal: The "I Have a Dream"® Program helps children from low-income areas reach their education and career goals by providing a long-term program of mentoring, tutoring, and enrichment with an assured opportunity for higher education.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Older Adults, Older Adults
Goal: The mission of this program is to provide a community-based, and community supported, economically viable and consumer-oriented, quality transportation service for seniors.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: The overriding treatment goal of Kartini Clinic is to secure lasting remission of eating disorder symptoms, allowing patients and their families to return to their own communities. Using a holistic approach, embracing medical as well as psychological and social interventions, patients are treated with the belief that parents do not cause eating disorders and children do not choose to have them.
Impact: Since 1998, Kartini Clinic has treated more than 2,000 patients and their families for a range of eating disorders.