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 / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Teens, Adults, Older Adults
Goal: CredibleMind helps surface resources with scientific validity to empower community members to take control of their mental health and spiritual well-being.
Impact: CredibleMind is available to the public and is also available as a customizable solution for community coalitions, health departments, hospitals, health plans, employers and other professional organizations to connect users to local services and resources.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / School Environment, Children, Urban
Goal: The goal of the program is to build sustainable, local, urban gardens, in order to deliver more reliable and better nutrition to today’s youth and urban communities.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Children, Teens, Adults, Older Adults, Families, Rural
Goal: The San Juan Regional Medical Center community van aims to meet the transportation needs among citizens of the Four Corners region for reliable access to quality healthcare.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of the program is to decrease African American infant mortality through raising awareness of racial health disparities, encouraging safe and healthy lifestyle practices, and providing correct perinatal health education.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Adults, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Rural
Goal: The goal of the Comprehensive Diabetes – Lower Extremities Amputation Prevention initiative is to improve foot care and reduce lower extremity amputations among people with diabetes.
Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Employment, Children
Goal: The goal of this program is to give students the academic, technical/technological and employability skills necessary to compete in higher education and high performance workplaces.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children
Goal: The goal of this program is to help all students achieve at the highest levels.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of cooperative learning is to establish positive interdependence among students. When positive interdependence is established in group learning situations, the quality of peer interaction improves. Instead of competing with or ignoring one another, students are more likely to promote the success of one another through mutual assistance, emotional support, and the sharing of ideas or resources. These positive social interactions, in turn, encourage greater social acceptance and the development of positive relationships among students and, in educational contexts, promote greater academic motivation and achievement (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005). In fact, research on social interaction suggests that gains in social skills alone are insufficient to reduce social problems among students and encourage more positive peer relations. Only positive interdependence, and the subsequent positive social interactions that arise from it, can motivate youth to re-evaluate previous conclusions regarding the social desirability of others (Bierman, 2004).
Impact: Cooperative learning can have positive effects on adolescent bullying, alcohol use, and tobacco use.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Children, Teens
Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent depression and other mood disorders in adolescents.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality
Goal: The goals of this promising practice were to identify the transportation-disadvantaged population that lacks nonemergency medical care because of low access to transportation; determine the medical conditions that this population experiences and describe other characteristics of these individuals, including geography; estimate the cost of providing the transportation necessary for this population to obtain medical transportation according to various transportation service needs and trip modes; estimate the healthcare costs and benefits that would result if these individuals obtained transportation to non-emergency medical care for key healthcare conditions prevalent for this population; and compare the relative costs (from transportation and routine healthcare) and benefits (such as improved quality of life and better managed care, leading to less emergency care) to determine the cost-effectiveness of providing transportation for selected conditions.
Impact: These results show that adding relatively small transportation costs do not make a disease-specific, otherwise cost-effective environment non-cost-effective. Providing increased access to non-emergency medical care does improve quality of life and saves money per patient.