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 / 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 Good Idea, Education / Student Performance K-12, Children, Teens, Urban
Goal: The goal of the program is to provide students with opportunities that will help them gain admission to high-achieving high schools.
Filed under Good Idea, Community / Crime & Crime Prevention, Teens
Goal: To reduce violence among adolescents and young adults living in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and violence in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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 Good Idea, Education / Childcare & Early Childhood Education, Urban
Goal: The mission of Project GRAD is to provide quality public school education for at-risk children in low-income communities and to increase high school and college graduation rates among these populations.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Heart Disease & Stroke, Adults, Women, Men, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban
Goal: The objective of Project HEART (Health Education Awareness Research Team) was to promote behavior changes to decrease cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in a high-risk Hispanic border population.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Women
Goal: The goal of this program is to improve health outcomes for pregnant and postpartum women with substance abuse problems and their infants.
Impact: Improvement in birth weight and gestational age, and reduction in admittance to neonatal intensive care unit and positive infant toxicology screens.
Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of Project SUCCESS is to prevent and reduce substance abuse in high-risk middle-school and high-school aged adolescents.
Filed under Good Idea, Health / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens
Goal: The goal of Project SUCCESS is to prevent and reduce substance abuse in high-risk middle-school and high-school aged adolescents.
Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children
Goal: The goal of this program is to promote social and emotional learning (SEL) and character development, to prevent bullying, and to build the problem-solving abilities and other life skills required for positive relationships throughout students' lives.
Impact: One study found that PATH students performed significantly better than their counterparts on the sociometric tests for aggression and hyperactivity-disruptive behavior according to peer sociometric reports. The PATH classrooms also received better observer ratings for their overall classroom atmosphere.