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 / Physical Activity
Goal: To reverse the rising tide of obesity and chronic disease among North Carolinians by helping them to eat smart, move more and achieve a healthy weight.
Impact: ESMMWL teaches healthy lifestyle behaviors surround diet and exercise so that participants may incorporate them into their lives in a sustained manner and sustain weight loss.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / Educational Attainment, Adults
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve outcomes among Community College students who are on academic probation.
Impact: Enhanced Opening Doors helps low-income students earn college credentials as the pathway to better jobs and further education.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Maternal, Fetal & Infant Health, Children, Women
Goal: The goal of CBFRS is to advance the health and development of first-time mothers and infants through a home visit program.
Impact: The findings indicate positive health and safety outcomes for first-time mothers and infants in the program: higher household safety levels, higher use of birth control methods, lower smoking behavior, higher knowledge of the effects of smoking on child development, and higher use of county clinics.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Health Care Access & Quality, Older Adults, Rural
Goal: To provide transportation to patients in South Central Missouri who otherwise have non-existent, limited, or expensive transportation options to and from healthcare appointments.
Impact: HealthTran has helped to improve healthcare access and long-term health outcomes, as well as reduced preventable hospitalizations and unnecessary emergency department visits.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Physical Activity, Families, Rural
Goal: Healthy Homes/Healthy Families aims to help rural residents of Southwest Georgia make healthy behavior changes.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use
Goal: To reduce drug abuse and increase positive mental and physical health outcomes among college students ages 18-25 years old.
Impact: Tailored health and wellness interventions may reduce risk factors facing college students, while perhaps improving their health-related quality of life.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Women's Health, Women
Goal: The goal of Insights is to increase condom use among young women at risk for HIV and other STDs.
Impact: Insights proves that tailored cognitive/behavioral minimal self-help interventions hold promise as HIV/STD prevention strategies for diverse populations of young at-risk women.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens
Goal: The goal of It's Your Game: Keep It Real is to reduce teen pregnancy, prevent STI transmission, and delay teen sexual activity in middle school students.
Impact: Participants in the It’s Your Game: Keep It Real intervention program were less likely to initiate sex by the ninth grade when compared to the control group.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Families, Urban
Goal: Research shows that children benefit from kinship care in many ways. Kinship care can reduce the trauma that children may have previously endured and the trauma that accompanies parental separation by providing them with a sense of stability and belonging in an otherwise unsettling time. Children who have been placed with relatives may have experienced chronic neglect and physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. While these experiences place children at risk for behavioral and health problems, a positive relationship with a caregiver and a stable and supportive living environment can mitigate their impact.1 Grandparents, other relative caregivers, and “fictive kin” — close friends holding a family-like bond with a child — are in a unique position to fill this supportive role and promote resiliency.
The goal of Kinship Connections is to support kin families' social, emotional, and economic needs to increase placement stability within the child’s community. Specific program objectives are to improve family economic security, family relationship functioning, child well-being, and to increase kin caregiver social support.
1Center on the Developing Child. (2007). The impact of early adversity on children’s development (InBrief). Retrieved from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/ resources/inbrief-the-impact-of-early-adversity-onchildrens-development.
2 Generations United. (2017). In loving arms: The protective role of grandparents and other relatives in raising children exposed to trauma. Retrieved from https://dl2.pushbulletusercontent.com/ uhDY7UgdGYnOod6G7VFkdKnuzE3yALmr/17- InLovingArms-Grandfamilies.pdf.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use
Goal: The mission of this program is to improve the lives of individuals and families affected by alcohol and other drug use through treatment, education, and research.
Impact: Matrix participants were 38% more likely to stay in treatment and 27% more likely to complete treatment compared to nonparticipants. Stimulant drug-use indicators were significantly reduced during treatment for Matrix participants. They also produced more drug-free urine samples compared to nonparticipants.