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 / Children's Health, Children
Goal: The goal of the Al's Pals program is to teach children how to practice positive ways to express feelings, relate to others, communicate, brainstorm ideas, solve problems, and differentiate between safe and unsafe substances and situations.
Impact: Studies have shown that the program resulted in higher degrees of positive change in the intervention groups, increases in prosocial behaviors and positive coping behaviors, and decreases in antisocial and negative coping behaviors.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children
Goal: The Be a Star program was developed to help preadolescents gain the knowledge and skills necessary to resist drugs.
Impact: During the third year of the evaluation, very strong differences emerged between intervention and control groups. The treatment groups scored significantly higher on the scales rating family bonding, pro-social behavior, self-concept, self-control, decision-making, emotional awareness, assertiveness, cooperation, attitudes toward drugs and alcohol, self-efficacy, attitudes toward African-American culture, and school bonding.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Other Conditions, Adults, Older Adults
Goal: Better Choices, Better HealthTM gives people with chronic conditions the skills to coordinate all the things needed to manage their heath, as well as to help them keep active in their lives.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Children, Teens
Goal: The aims of the BASICS program are 1) to reduce alcohol consumption and its adverse consequences, 2) to promote healthier choices among young adults, and 3) to provide important information and coping skills for risk reduction.
Impact: Students who received a brief individual preventive intervention had significantly greater reductions in negative consequences that persisted over a 4-year period than their control-group counterparts. For those individuals receiving the brief intervention, dependence symptoms were more likely to decrease and less likely to increase.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Women, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The mission of the By My Side Birth Support Program is to provide birth support and encourage breastfeeding among low-income and immigrant mothers living in Brooklyn through the use of doula services.
Impact: By March 2012, the By My Side Birth Support Program successfully trained more than 30 women in the community. These doulas, along with those already working for By My Side, participated in more than 100 births.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Housing & Homes, Urban
Goal: The mission of this project is to improve the safety and living conditions for residents of Boyle Heights and to empower those residents to make positive changes in their communitites and their lives.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Adults, Urban
Goal: The goal of CeaseFire is to interrupt the cycle of violence by changing norms and promoting positive behavior change.
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 Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce the negative impacts of divorce and separation on children.
Impact: Children of parents in the program said they felt caught in the middle less often compared to those of non-participants, and reported less stress in general. Parents who took the course also reported more awareness of their children's feelings, and had better communication with their children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Families
Goal: The goal of this program is to provide information about mood disorders to parents, equip parents with skills they need to communicate this information to their children, and open dialogue in families about the effects of parental depression.
Impact: Parents in the program scored better in their reports of child-related behavior and attitude changes of parental illness than parents who received a group-format presentation. Children in the program scored higher on measures of improved understanding of parental mood disorder than children who received a group-format lecture.