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

Goal: The goal of Community PROMISE is to encourage HIV prevention practices.

Impact: PROMISE leads to significant community-wide progress toward consistent HIV risk reduction.

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

Goal: The Penn Resiliency Program is a depression prevention program that seeks to reduce the longevity of symptoms exhibited and the severity of symptoms at onset of depression, through cognitive-behavioral therapy and problem-solving techniques.

Impact: The Penn Resiliency program shows that a group-based program seeking to prevent the initial onset of and decrease the exacerbation of depression children and teens by incorporating specific coping and problem-solving skills can reduce depressive symptoms over time.

Filed under Good Idea, Community / Civic Engagement, Older Adults, Families

Goal: The goal of the program is to create a sustainable, affordable, and healthy food system for a community through an urban farm and its various programs.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Respiratory Diseases, Children, Teens, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Phoenix Healthy Homes project was to use a multi-factorial approach to reduce hazard prevalence and improve self-reports of home safety and respiratory health.

Impact: The Phoenix Healthy Homes project showed that a tailored healthy homes improvement package significantly improves self-reported respiratory health and safety, reduces respiratory health and injury hazards, and can be implemented in concert with a mobile clinical setting.

Filed under Good Idea, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children

Goal: To create confident, literate students equipped with a variety of tools for written, verbal, and artistic expression and to improve the relevance and effectiveness of in-school learning.

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

Goal: The main goals of the program are to prevent adolescent non-users from experimenting with drugs and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users.

Impact: Project Alert participants were 30% less likely than other students to begin using marijuana and analyses showed that the program significantly dampened pro-drug beliefs about cigarette and marijuana use.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce or stop smoking among adolescents.

Impact: At 3-month follow-up, 17% of youths in the treatment conditions reported having quit smoking for at least 30 days, compared with only 8% of those teens in the control condition. These positive effects were also demonstrated when moved from a clinic setting to the classroom, as students in the program condition experienced a greater reduction in weekly smoking and monthly smoking, at 6-and-12-month follow-ups.

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

Goal: The goal of Project START is to reduce sexual risk behavior of young men re-entering the community after incarceration.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to prevent or reduce tobacco use among children and adolescents.

Impact: One study found that Project the project reduced initiation of cigarette smoking in the two years following the program by 26% when compared to a control group. Students showed increased knowledge of tobacco addiction, related diseases, and media influences and had improved communication, refusal, and coping skills.

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve treatment outcomes for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Impact: PE Therapy is considered by expert consensus the treatment of choice for PTSD clients whose prominent symptoms include intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and trauma-related fear and avoidance. One study demonstrated that the treatment group showed significant improvement in PTSD symptoms and depressive symptoms at posttest, and these treatment effects were maintained at 6-month follow-up.

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