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.

Submit a Promising Practice

Children in Between

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.

Choosing Life: Empowerment, Actions, Results (CLEAR) (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Children, Teens

Goal: The goal of the CLEAR intervention is to empower HIV-positive youth to reduce risk behaviors and improve mental and physical health.

Clinician-Based Cognitive Psychoeducational Intervention for Families (Family Talk)

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.

Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to relieve symptoms of PTSD, depression, and general anxiety among children exposed to trauma.

Impact: Studies have found significant reductions in PTSD and depression symptoms for treatment children in CBITS when compared with a control group. Additionally, the program demonstrated effectiveness at reducing parent-reported psychosocial dysfunction among participating children.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Depression (Pittsburg, PA)

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

Goal: The goal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Depression is to treat depressive symptoms in adolescents.

Impact: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Depression showed more rapid treatment response than both systematic behavior family therapy and non-directive support therapy. CBT also showed a greater rate of decline in self-reported depression over time.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Late-Life Depression

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression in older adults.

Impact: Research has shown that behavioral cognitive therapy helped patients reduce their depression symptoms, and maintained this improvement at 1-year follow-up more effectively than other types of therapy. At 6-month follow-up, clients who completed CBT were less likely to meet criteria for diagnoses of depression than clients who completed treatment as usual.

Colorectal Cancer Screening Intervention for Veterans (Chicago, IL)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults, Urban

Goal: The goal of this program was to increase colorectal cancer screening recommendations and completion rates at a Veterans Affairs medical center.

Impact: Veterans Affairs (VA) patients in the intervention group received more recommendations for colorectal cancer screening and completed more screening tests compared to those in the control group.

Colorectal Web (Michigan)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Cancer, Adults

Goal: The goal of the Colorectal Web interactive website is to promote colorectal cancer screening.

Impact: Colorectal Web is more effective than a standard colorectal cancer website at prompting previously unscreened individuals to choose a preferred colorectal cancer screening test and to be screened for colorectal cancer.

Commit to Quit (USA)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Women

Goal: The goal of Commit to Quit is to help female smokers quit smoking through group programming and exercise.

Common Sense Parenting (CSP) (USA)

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

Goal: The goal of Common Sense Parenting is to develop or enhance parenting skills.

Impact: Results from the Common Sense Parenting program indicated improvement in child behavior, parent attitudes, family satisfaction and parent problem-solving ability.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success and/or promise in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures of improvement in outcome of interest (i.e. increase in voter registration, not just delivery of voter registration drive) and/ or the outcome measure is increased or improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant.

A Good Idea meets the following HCI criteria:

The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
The program evaluation is limited to descriptive measure(s) of success/accomplishment (i.e., program participation rates, number of services/education sessions/radio messages provided). Note: oftentimes, the program has been newly implemented and a program evaluation has not yet been conducted. Programs that have not yet been evaluated, but which show promise in improving health or quality of life, are classified as Good Ideas until an evaluation is conducted.

An Evidence-Based Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures showing improvement in the outcome(s) of interest after the implementation of the program (i.e. increase in smoking cessation, not just the delivery of a smoking cessation program). The outcome measure(s) is/are compared at relevant time periods before and after the intervention or program implementation. Alternatively, the evaluation study compares the outcome(s) between an intervention group and an appropriate control group.
The study is of peer-review quality and presents numbers in a scientific manner; measurements of precision and reliability are included (e.g. confidence intervals, standard errors), results from statistical tests show a significant difference or change in the outcome measure(s), and relevant point estimates and p-values are presented. Note: if the results from an evaluation of a program are presented in a scientific manner and the outcome measure is improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant, the practice is classified as effective and not evidence-based.