Abstract
This chapter discusses the complexity of the emerging field of adolescent health and it addresses health-related concerns that are extremely diverse — from cigarette smoking to obesity, from pregnancy to essential hypertension, and from automobile accidents to persistent depression. The levels of analysis that are employed — from biological to psychological to social and cultural — are disparate. Concepts of disease are largely replaced in the society by notions of lifestyle; there is more concern with individual responsibility, choice, and decision than with biological anomalies or the pharmacological properties of health-compromising substances; and there is far more attention to the social context of health than it is in more conventional, medically oriented approaches. The critical issues discussed in the chapter are organized into two different categories — issues for explanatory research and issues for intervention research. Division of the issues into these two categories serves as a reminder that the kind of research that is being done in health, and in behavioral science more generally, is not at all homogeneous.
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