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 / Oral Health, Children
Goal: The goal of Smiles for a Lifetime is to make pediatric dental care accessible for all children.
Filed under Good Idea, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families
Goal: The project's goal is to identify children with disabilities and other special needs at an early age and provide those identified with the appropriate support so they can be successful when entering kindergarten.
Filed under Effective Practice, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Children, Families
Goal: The program's goal is to help four- and five-year old children become better prepared for kindergarten.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce rates of TB among foreign-born populations and to increase rates of treatment for latent TB infection.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Mental Health & Mental Disorders, Adults, Urban
Goal: The mission of The Key Clubhouse is to afford people who have been disrupted by mental illness the opportunity to recover meaningful and productive lives through reintegration in the workplace and the community.
Impact: Individuals who participate in a Clubhouse program have been found to have higher rates of employment, reduced hospitalization, reduced incarceration, and improved well-being as compared with other mental health programs.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Transportation, Adults, Families
Goal: TransForm aims to create world-class public transportation and walkable communities in the Bay Area and beyond.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The goal of this program is to access individuals at high risk for developing TB disease and to provide therapy for LTBI in order to eliminate TB.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases
Goal: Vaccination programs in WIC settings include the following:
-Assessment of infants’ and children’s immunization status
-On-site vaccinations or referral to vaccination providers
-Additional interventions such as client reminder and recall systems, manual tracking and outreach efforts, or adoption of monthly voucher pickup schedules that require more WIC visits when vaccinations are not up-to-date
Vaccination services may be provided in WIC clinics, or through collocation and coordination of WIC programs with other healthcare services.
Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends vaccination programs in Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) settings—when used with additional components--to increase vaccination rates among children.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Adults, Women, Men, Families, Urban
Goal: The goal of With All Families: Parents is to support pediatric care visits and improve child welfare by using screening tools and individual parent coaching to identify and address social determinants of health. Specific program objectives are to improve family functioning generally while specifically focusing on improving protective factors and economic-self-sufficiency. As part of the program, staff also work with families to increase parent concrete support and connect parents to needed physical health, behavior health, and educational resources for their child.
Research supports the benefits of using the strategies employed by With All Families: Parents (i.e., screening, resource navigation, and parent coaching) to improve family welfare by addressing underlying risk factors related to poverty and access to resources. For example, programs designed to provide screening and resource navigation support are associated with reduced social needs, improved child health and decreased child hospitalization visits. In light of evidence suggesting that social factors may in fact play a larger role in determining one’s health than medical care, programs that target these social factors, such as With All Families: Parents, are becoming increasingly important.
References
Garg, A., Toy, S., Tripodis, Y., Silverstein, M., & Freeman, E. (2015). Addressing social determinants of health at well child care visits: a cluster RCT. Pediatrics, 135(2), e296-e304.
Gottlieb, L. M., Hessler, D., Long, D., Laves, E., Burns, A. R., Amaya, A., ... & Adler, N. E. (2016). Effects of social needs screening and in-person service navigation on child health: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA pediatrics, 170(11), e162521-e162521.
Pantell, M. S., Hessler, D., Long, D., Alqassari, M., Schudel, C., Laves, E., ... & Gottlieb, L. M. (2020). Effects of in-person navigation to address family social needs on child health care utilization: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA network open, 3(6), e206445-e206445.
Braveman, P., & Gottlieb, L. (2014). The social determinants of health: it's time to consider the causes of the causes. Public health reports, 129(1_suppl2), 19-31.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Social Environment, Children, Adults, Families, Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Goal: The program's primary goal is to prepare the Harvey County community for a disaster. It also seeks to increase outreach to minority communities and recruit volunteers for the MRC.