This website remains available as a historical record of materials developed during the December 2021–January 2026 Promise Neighborhoods technical assistance contract. Please note that this site is no longer actively updated. For the most current information, visit the U.S. Department of Education Promise Neighborhoods (PN) webpage.

Results by Term: Health and Wellbeing

Promise Neighborhoods as a Strategy to Address Chronic Absenteeism: How Two Grantees Use Relational Approaches to Welcome Students Back to School

Author: Emily Verburg and Karin Scott | Year of Publication: 2025

Chronic absenteeism has lasting ripple effects on schools and communities. In this blog post, learn how Evansville Promise Neighborhood and IndyEast Promise Neighborhood are leveraging partnerships and adopting creative, relational strategies to connect with students and increase attendance.

Full-Time Parent, Full-Time Leader: How Jubilee Park, Dallas, Strengthens Parents to Become Community Leaders

Author: Vivian Liu | Year of Publication: 2025

Jubilee Park Promise Neighborhood, based in Dallas, Texas, exemplifies how place-based education initiatives can engage parents and elevate community leaders. These leaders advise the Promise Neighborhood initiative, support neighbors, and benefit the community by influencing affordable housing development and safety. This blog summarizes key strategies to create parent leaders.

Sustaining the Infrastructure Behind the Promise: Sustainability Planning Guide and Workbook

Author: Promise Neighborhoods | Year of Publication: 2025

The Sustainability Planning Guide and Workbook offer past and present Promise Neighborhoods grantees and backbone organizations a four-step roadmap to maintain their collaborations after federal grant funding ends. The guide highlights the key infrastructure-essential for effective partnership-supporting seven conditions: community engagement, partnerships, data, financing, policy and systems, communications, and organizational capacity.

Deer Creek Promise Community’s Early Learning Programs: Setting The Stage For Lifelong Success

Author: Karin Scott, Mikaela Tajo, Victoria Martin | Year of Publication: 2024

This impact story outlines how Mississippi Delta communities unite with a shared purpose. Deer Creek Promise Community’s early learning programs and strategies are featured.

Making the Case for Promise Neighborhoods

Author: Megan Gallagher, Lori Nathanson, Peter Tatian, and Jarle Crocker | Year of Publication: 2024

This brief highlights Promise Neighborhoods’ 10-year history and vision for the future. Illustrative stories from Mission Promise Neighborhood, Partners for Rural Impact, and South Ward Promise Neighborhood are featured.

COVID-19 Response and Recovery in Promise Neighborhoods 2020-2022

Author: Jillian Spindle and Lori Nathanson | Year of Publication: 2023

A Promise Neighborhood is a place-based, collective impact approach to improving results for children and families. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Promise Neighborhoods were uniquely positioned to provide on-the-ground community response. They were partners to government, philanthropies, businesses, and community institutions in reaching students, parents, and neighbors with essential emergency services and vital information. This paper explores Promise Neighborhoods’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrates that investing in Promise Neighborhoods produces more than academic results; it ensures critical community infrastructure is available during times of crisis.

A New Day for Data: Bringing Change to a Forgotten Community - Washington, DC

Author: Serena Lei, Lydia Thompson | Year of Publication: 2016

This data story focuses on the Washington, DC, Promise Neighborhood’s use of data to lift an isolated and forgotten community out of poverty.

Leveraging Policy Advocacy to Keep Students Healthy (GPRAs 8–9)

Author: Promise Neighborhoods Institute | Year of Publication: 2016

The capacity to leverage policy advocacy and systems change is critical to scaling up and sustaining efforts to ensure youth living in Promise Neighborhoods are healthy and connected to the necessary services and supports to prepare them for college and career success.

Addressing the Impact of Trauma on Academic Performance and School Attendance

Author: PolicyLink | Year of Publication: 2016

Exposure to a traumatic event places a young person at risk of a lower reading proficiency, a lower grade -point average, and more days of school absences. Throughout their lifetimes, many young students living in underserved communities will experience one or more traumatic events, putting them at risk of chronic absenteeism and lower academic proficiency. 

Early Learning in Promise Neighborhoods

Author: The Center for the Study of Social Policy | Year of Publication: 2016

Many Promise Neighborhoods grantees are well into the implementation phase and adopting different approaches to achieve the common result that all children enter kindergarten ready to succeed. In 2012, the Center for the Study of Social Policy authored a report with snapshots of the early learning work taking shape in the first cohort of Promise Neighborhoods grantees.