How we're Kennedy's programs to combat communism diffrent from the programs of previous administrations?

The basis of Kennedy's foreign policy was and remained the 'containment policy' set up by president Truman in the late 1940s, which held that the communist sphere of influence should be contained to the areas where it had become dominant by then and that it should be (if necessary, forcibly) opposed if Communism tried to expand the territories under its control. The Korean War was one result of that policy.

Kennedy expanded the means to pre-empt or combat Communism by starting programs of supporting counterinsurgence groups to counter Communist-inspired guerilla or 'liberation' groups in several newly decolonized countries. This last policy sometimes blew up in the USA's face, as in the case of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and later, of the Iran-Contra scandal under president Raegan. Secondly, he expanded the grass-roots countering of Communism by setting up the Peace Corps that served the dual purpose of bringing education and medical care to Third Wold countries in combination with so establishing US influence and 'western' democratic values in the countries where it was active.