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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.

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Housing as Health Care - New York’s Boundary-Crossing Experiment (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Economy / Housing & Homes

Goal: The goal of this experiment is to estimate the effects of New York’s plan for supportive housing for high-need, high-cost Medicaid recipients.

Impact: Placing people who are homeless in supportive affordable housing paired with supportive services such as on-site case management and referrals to community-based services can lead to improved health, reduced hospital use, and decreased health care costs.

Healthy Families New York (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Families

Goal: The goals of HFNY are to promote positive parent-child interaction; to ensure optimal pre-natal care; to promote healthy childhood growth and development; and to enhance family functioning.

Impact: Mothers participating in the HFNY study were significantly less likely to deliver low-birth-weight babies than mothers in the control group (3.3% vs 8.3%). HFNY parents also reported having engaged in significantly fewer acts of serious abuse and neglect.

New York's Banking Development Districts (New York)

Filed under Effective Practice, Economy / Investment & Personal Finance

Goal: The goal of the program is to increase access to financial services for low-income families as well as stimulate economic development in distressed neighborhoods.

Cornell Waste Management Institute Food Scrap Composting Project (New York)

Filed under Effective Practice, Environmental Health / Built Environment

Goal: The goal of the Cornell Waste Management Institute project was to increase the capacity to compost the tremendous amount of food scraps produced in New York State.

Kinship Navigator Program (New York)

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Families

Goal: The program aims to provide information and resources to kinship caregivers (grandparents, relatives, foster parents, and others) in New York State.

Behavior Management Through Adventure

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.

Columbia County Healthy Neighborhoods Program (Columbia County)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Environmental Health / Toxins & Contaminants, Families

Goal: The Healthy Neighborhoods program seeks to reduce housing related illness and injury through prevention and education.

Impact: In the past five years, the HNP visited 31,000 homes with 85,000 residents, and provided the asthma intervention to 11,000 adults and children with asthma. The assessments created a valuable data set about the health effects of housing hazards.

Enhanced Opening Doors (California, Louisiana, New York, Ohio)

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.

Mailed Psychoeducational Intervention for Colorectal Cancer Screening (England)

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among older adults.

Impact: Participants in the intervention group had significantly higher colorectal cancer screening attendance, as well as having more positive attitudes about screening and placing a higher priority on screening.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.