Promising Practices

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Urban

Goal: The goal of the Community AIDS Prevention Program is to educate inner city Latino adolescents about how to reduce risk related to HIV/AIDS, and to encourage sexually active teens to use condoms.

Impact: This program shows that prevention programs targeting HIV/AIDS risk-reduction strategies and condom use encouragement can delay male initiation of sexual intercourse, reduce females' number of sexual partners, and increase likelihood of possessing a condom among sexually active youth.

Filed under Effective Practice, Health / Immunizations & Infectious Diseases, Teens, Adults, Women, Men, Urban

Goal: The goal of Popular Opinion Leader is to reach as many people as possible in order to successfully and dramatically reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children, Teens

Goal: The goal of this program is to improve academic success, behavior, and character development.

Impact: Multiple studies have consistently found PA effective for improving achievement scores, attendance, and self-concept and for reducing drug use, violence, and other problem behaviors. Results were often better in more disadvantaged schools.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens

Goal: The long-term goals of the program are to arrest the development of teen antisocial behaviors and drug experimentation. Intermediate goals are to improve parents' family management and communication skills.

Impact: Parents had improved feelings toward their children and were less likely to react negatively to their children's behavior and less likely to take a "lax" approach to their children after participating in the program. They also showed improvements in the skill areas of tracking and reinforcing behavior, setting expectations and defining problems, and remaining calm in stressful situations. Antisocial behaviors in their children decreased significantly, measures of child adjustment showed improvement, and total problem behavior decreased. Furthermore, the PFS intervention resulted in significantly less use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Education / School Environment, Children

Goal: The goals of this program are:
- Detect school adjustment difficulties
- Prevent social and emotional problems
- Enhance learning skills

Impact: One study demonstrated that participants made significant improvements in task orientation, specifically in working more independently and completing tasks faster. In behavior control, program students showed increased coping skills and lower levels of aggressiveness and produced fewer disruptions. In assertiveness, students had improved participation in activities, were better at expressing ideas, and showed increased leadership and decreased shyness. Improvements in peer sociability included increases in the quality of peer relationships and improved social skills. Several other evaluations of the Primary Project present evidence of improved school adjustment and decreases in problem behaviors for participants.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Community / Social Environment, Children, Urban

Goal: The goal of Prime Time Palm Beach County is to improve the quality of school-age afterschool programs through assessment, guidance, and support.

Impact: Based on the 2009 study findings, Prime Time's Quality Improvement System resulted in improvements made to afterschool programs which enhanced quality programming and important developmental learning experiences for youth.

Filed under Evidence-Based Practice, Health / Adolescent Health, Teens, Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Goal: To reduce HIV risk behaviors among adolescents aged 11 to 14.

Impact: This program effectively modified sexual risk among adolescents aged 11 to 14 by focusing students on positive future selves.

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 / Alcohol & Drug Use, Teens

Goal: The program’s goal is to delay the age when young people begin drinking and to reduce drinking among those who have already started.

Impact: Studies have shown that by the end of the intervention, participating students were significantly less likely to drink alcohol than nonparticipants. Also, students who did not use alcohol before participating in the program were less likely to use alcohol after the intervention than similar youth who did not participate.