Promising Practices

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality

Goal: To evaluate the impact of rideshare-based medical transportation on the proportion of Medicaid patients attending scheduled primary care appointments.

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men, Urban

Goal: The mission of the Rikers Health Advocacy Program is to provide an intensive AIDS education designed to reduce HIV risk behaviors for incarcerated adolescent male drug users.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goals of the program are: 1) to promote abstinence maintenance among sexually abstinent students and encourage safer sex practices to sexually active students, 2) compare the effect of RAPP when taught by different providers, and 3) to explore the factors that impact a student's decision to engage in sexual activity.

Impact: Regular teacher-taught male (p=.001) and female students (p=.05) and peer-taught male students (p=.02) had the highest rates of delaying the onset of sexual activity.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Economy, Rural

Goal: Medical-legal partnerships perform advocacy services for vulnerable and under-served populations. These populations are typically burdened disproportionately by legal and medical problems. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of a rural medical-legal partnership (MLP).

Impact: The rural medical-legal partnership continued to show social and financial impacts, such as health care recovery dollars (319% return on investment between 2007 and 2009), Social Security benefits, family law services, and end-of-life guidance.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Children, Teens

Goal: The goals of the program are to increase students’ awareness of what constitutes healthy versus abusive dating relationships; to increase students’ awareness of dating abuse as well as its causes and consequences; to equip students with the skills and resources to help themselves or friends in abusive dating relationships; and to equip students with the skills to develop healthy dating relationships, including positive communication, anger management, and conflict resolution.

Impact: Safe Dates educates and equips youth to identify, address, and mitigate abusive and violent dating relationships.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Family Planning, Teens

Goal: The goal of the Safer Choices program is to reduce the number of students engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse.

Impact: The program reduced the frequency of intercourse without a condom, reduced the number of sexual partners with whom students had intercourse without a condom, and increased use of condoms and other protection against pregnancy at last intercourse.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety

Goal: The goal of this program was to improve transportation safety in Massachusetts.

Impact: The Saving Lives Program successfully reduced drunk driving by 42% and speeding-related crashes by 25% through community-based, innovative, and cost-effective interventions.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the program is to help families gain or increase parenting and family management skills that would facilitate successful child academic and social adjustment and, therefore, to promote social and academic competence and to lower risk for later antisocial behavior. In addition, the intervention concentrates on promoting initial academic success.

Impact: Children who received the intervention improved in overall reading ability at a more rapid rate than those who did not receive the intervention. In addition, SAFEChildren participants showed an improvement in concentration.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Physical Activity, Children, Teens, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program was to lower the Body Mass Index (BMI) of obese children, and thus decrease the prevalence of obesity, through a multi-faceted lifestyle intervention program.

Impact: Group based interventions are beneficial in reducing BMI and creating healthy lifestyles in young, obese individuals.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders

Goal: The goal of this program is to help clients move beyond trauma and substance abuse.

Impact: Multiple evaluations of the Seeking Safety program in various settings have shown positive outcomes for substance abuse/addiction, substance abuse disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.