Effective Interventions for Communities
Includes programs demonstrated in published high-quality, peer-reviewed studies and evaluation reports to produce significant positive health or behavioral outcomes, and policy, environment, or economic impacts.
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Program name: Tomando
Control de su Salud
Change type: Individual
Description: Workshops, conducted in Spanish, held once a week for six weeks in community settings such as senior centers, churches, libraries, and hospitals. Facilitators are non-health professionals with chronic diseases. Workshops cover:- Techniques to deal with frustration, fatigue, pain, and isolation
- Exercises for maintaining and improving strength, flexibility, and endurance
- Appropriate use of medications
- Communicating effectively with family, friends, and health professionals
- Healthy eating
- Appropriate use of healthcare system
- How to evaluate new treatments
- Tested in rural setting
- Audience tested: 5,000 Spanish-speaking people with heart disease, lung disease, or diabetes; followed for one year
- Compared to controls, participants in the intervention group showed improved outcomes in terms of:
- Health status
- Health behavior
- Self-efficacy
- Emergency room visits (fewer)
- At one year post-intervention, improvements were maintained
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Program name: The
Stanford Nutrition Action Program (SNAP)
Change type: Individual
Description: Nutrition education program for English-speaking adults with low literacy skills teaching methods of choosing and preparing low-fat foods in ways that help women and their families reduce heart attack risk by lowering fat intake. Six-week classroom-based intervention followed by a 12-week maintenance intervention.
Demonstrated Success- Audiences tested: Primarily young Hispanic women (58%) as well as White (20%), Asian (10%), and women of other races (12%)
- Significant reductions in the percentages of calories from fat and in calories from saturated fat
- Increased nutrition knowledge
- Increased self-efficacy for achieving a low-fat diet