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 Good Idea, Health / Prevention & Safety, Children, Teens, Adults, Older Adults, Urban
The goal of the Backyard Initiative is to improve health and health care.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Older Adults, Adults, Women, Men, Older Adults
SHHC targets individual, social, and built environment levels of behavior change and is designed to improve diet and physical activity behaviors, assess and improve local food and physical environment resources, and shift social norms about active living and healthy eating through civic engagement and capacity building.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Wellness & Lifestyle
To increase quality of life and longevity among members of a community through community-wide interventions which address community, social network, habitat, and inner self.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens
The mission of this program is to provide services that allow both victims and offenders to participate in a process where both parties have a sense of restored wholeness in their lives and in their communities. This wholeness is manifested when parties are feeling a sense of safety and trust in their communities and in their relationships with self and others. It is the goal of this organization to provide a sense of justice that repairs the damage done and restores relationships, both personal and communal, to their original state to the extent possible.
Direct Mailing of Fecal Occult Blood Tests to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening (Wright County, MN)
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults
The goal of this program was to increase colorectal cancer screening using direct mailings of fecal occult blood test (FOBT) kits for noninvasive colon cancer screening.
Direct mailing of FOBT kits resulted in an increase in self-reported colon cancer screening adherence.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Literacy, Children
The goal of Itchy's Alphabet is to help children improve their literacy levels.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Children, Urban
The goals of the program are to carry out a comprehensive strategy to apprehend and prosecute offenders who carry firearms, to put others on notice that offenders face certain and serious punishment for carrying illegal firearms, and to prevent youths from following the same criminal path.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Urban
The goal of the Runaway Intervention Program is to prevent or reduce risky behaviors of young runaway girls that have been sexually abused or exploited in order to return participants to a healthy developmental trajectory.
This program is a promising intervention for restoring sexually abused runaway girls to a healthy developmental trajectory, with particular benefit to those who are at the highest risk.
Filed under Effective Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Families
The mission of DAIP is to provide advocacy on behalf of battered women. DAIP staff provide information and assess the women's safety regardless of the situation, but they also offer advocacy at three key time periods: immediately after police intervention and arrest, throughout the court proceedings, and after case disposition. The advocates offer support and information about available community resources, explain the criminal court process, describe the civil court remedies available, and obtain information from the women in order to serve as their liaisons to the legal system and to ascertain the level of danger that each woman is in.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children
The goal of this program is to prevent delinquency, substance abuse, and school dropout in high risk children.