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.

Submit a Promising Practice

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Reducing Alcohol-Impaired Driving: Mass Media Campaigns (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Adults

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends mass media campaigns to reduce alcohol-impaired driving under certain conditions. These conditions include carefully planned and well-executed campaigns; adequate audience exposure; and settings with ongoing alcohol-impaired driving prevention activities.

CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Reducing Alcohol-Impaired Driving: Multicomponent Interventions with Community Mobilization (USA)

CDC

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety, Adults

Impact: The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends the use of multicomponent interventions with community mobilization on the basis of strong evidence of their effectiveness in reducing alcohol-impaired driving.

Checkpoints Program (Connecticut)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Teens

Goal: The goal of the Checkpoints Program is to encourage parental limits on teen driving, and decrease risky teen driving.

Impact: The Checkpoints Program increased the rate at which parents placed greater limits on high-risk teen driving conditions and decreased traffic violations among teens.

Child Development-Community Policing Program (New Haven, CT)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Domestic Violence & Abuse, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Child Development-Community Policing Program (CDCP) is to reduce the negative consequences of exposure to violent and potentially traumatic events among children and their families.

Impact: The CDCP Program shows that through community policing efforts, it is possible to successfully intervene early in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of children's exposure to violence.

Community Trials Intervention to Reduce High-Risk Drinking

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

Goal: The goal of this program is to reduce high-risk drinking behaviors.

Impact: Studies demonstrate that the program resulted in decreases in substance use and behaviors related to risk factors. Participants had significant reductions in drinking quantities, variances in drinking quantities, rates of driving when having had too much to drink, and rates of driving over the legal limits relative to nonparticipants. There was also a significant decrease in the number of nighttime crashes per month and the monthly rates of driving under the influence (DUI) crashes.

Drivers Under the Influence Intensive Supervision Program (Multnomah County, OR)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety

Goal: The goal of the DISP program is to reduce drunk driving among alcohol traffic offenders.

Emergency Department Means Restriction Education

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Prevention & Safety

Goal: The goal of Emergency Department Means Restriction Education is to help parents and adult caregivers of at-risk youth recognize the importance of taking immediate action to restrict access to firearms, alcohol, and prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the home in order to lessen the risk of self harm.

Impact: The Means Restriction program shows that ED-based programs and provided practical information can help parents and adult caregivers of at-risk youth recognize the importance of taking immediate, new action to restrict access to dangers in the home.

Georgia's Teenage and Adult Driver Responsibility Act (Georgia)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Teens

Goal: The goal of TADRA is to reduce fatal crashes among teenage drivers.

Impact: After the implementation of TADRA, speed-related fatal crashes were cut by 42%, and alcohol-related fatal crashes decreased nearly 60%.

Healthy Families: Palm Beach (Palm Beach County)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Children's Health, Children, Families, Urban

Goal: The goal of Healthy Families Palm Beach is to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Impact: The Healthy Families program improves birth outcomes, nurtures child development, prevents child abuse and neglect, improves family functioning, and help parents develop more positive beliefs in their parental roles.

Healthy Steps for Older Adults (HSOA) (Pennsylvania)

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Public Safety, Older Adults

Goal: The Pennsylvania Department of Aging offers this fall risk screening and prevention program to adults 50 years of age and older. The program is designed to raise awareness of falls, introduce steps on how to reduce falls, improve overall health, and provide referrals and resources.

An Effective Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

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.
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:

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

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.
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.
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.