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 Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Urban
Goal: The partnership uses a comprehensive strategy with four specific goals:
1. Carry out a multi-agency law enforcement (suppression) strategy to reduce gun-related and other violent crimes committed by youths 17 and older.
2. Operate an intensive intervention program to reduce the risk factors for the highest risk youths, their families, and the community.
3. Mobilize the community at the grassroots level to address the problems of hard-to-reach families and the highest risk youths.
4. Operate a long-range prevention program that identifies, links, and strengthens existing resources to serve youths who may be at risk.
Goal: The mission of BARHII is to transform public health practice for the purpose of eliminating health inequities using a broad spectrum of approaches that improve community health. Consistent with that mission, BARHII has set the following objectives:
- Train staff on broad spectrum of strategies to improve nutrition and physical activity, and reduce health inequities.
- Develop regional collaborations of public health departments, organizations, coalitions and communities to participate in a comprehensive approach to improve nutrition and physical activity.
- Develop a media advocacy campaign to raise awareness among policy makers and the general public about key issues of nutrition and physical activity, and their link to chronic disease and health inequities.
- Use the regional platform to achieve changes in institutional practices and public policies, and increase support for public health.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Disabilities, Children, Teens
Goal: The mission of this program is to stabilize students, help them earn their high school diploma, and prepare them for a future as productive workers.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Men
Goal: The goal of Behavior Management through Adventure is to address the needs of at-risk youth in therapeutic settings.
Impact: Behavior Management Through Adventure was successful in lowering rearrest rates, decreasing the time period from release until rearrest, improving depression symptoms, increasing family self-concept, and lowering social introversion.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Civic Engagement
Goal: Community associations can increase resident involvement by treating all residents as stakeholders, developing and conducting community harmony and spirit-enhancing programs, and including residents in the initial stages of program development.
Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Air
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce the environmental impact of commuting and to help get employees to work safely, on time, and free of commute-related stress.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women
Goal: The goal of the BetterU intervention is to increase knowledge of heart disease, increase physical activity, and improve nutrition among women aged 25 years and older.
Filed under Good Idea, Art & Recreation / Sports Recreation & Parks, Children, Teens, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of the program is to provide middle and high school students in the greater Philadelphia are with education and tools to become life-long cyclists.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Teens
Goal: The school's philosophy is "to provide the individual student with the academic and vocational/technical skills essential to achieve success in a productive career as well as to provide the global community with a highly qualified and prepared workforce."
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens
Goal: To significantly reduce depressive symptoms and to reduce the rates of future major depressive disorder onset among adolescents.
Impact: The Blues Program has been shown to decrease depressive symptoms, decrease rates of major depression onset, decrease rates of substance use, and increase factors that are protective against depression.