The Promising Practices collection has locally inspired models and ideas that have been implemented and evaluated to varying degrees in programs and communities.

A promising practice helps spread the reach of the campaign and has the potential to positively impact families with young children and the organizations, health care professionals, and early care and education providers who serve them.

We use a set of criteria to evaluate our partners’ activities and to determine which activities to include in the collection. The criteria are below, along with some questions to stimulate your thinking about ways in which you can adapt your activities so they become promising practices.

Goal Alignment: Do the goals and objectives of your activity and the goals and objectives of Learn the Signs. Act Early. align with one another?

Sound Practice: Is your activity reasonable, given the setting and target audience? Is your activity based on sound health education, communication, and/or public health practice?

Audience Reach: Does your activity reach a specified targeted audience? Do the materials you plan to use suit your audience? Does your activity use the appropriate channels to reach your target audience?

Partnerships: If you collaborated with other implementation partners, did those partners embrace your activity? Do your partnership goals and the partnership goals of Learn the Signs. Act Early. align with one another?

Goal Achievement: Did you achieve your goals? If your plans or goals changed, were you able to reach your new goals? Were you successful in reaching your target audience? Did you reach a reasonable quantity?

Evidence Base: Formative and/or outcome-level data is desirable but often challenging to collect. Try to think about ways to use evaluation, either before or after the activity, to demonstrate the effectiveness of your activity.

Sustainability: Can your activity be implemented and sustained over time at little-to-no additional cost? Or can your organization easily absorb the costs of continuing the activity?

Translation: Can the activity be replicated and/or generalizable to other places? Even if your activity is unique to a particular setting or audience, a promising activity may have principles or ideas that could be applied in other contexts.

To see the current promising practices collection, click here.