Abstract
This article summarizes the key messages and recommendations from the recent National Academies report, Promoting Positive Adolescent Health Behaviors and Outcomes: Thriving in the 21st Century. The first section outlines important definitions and frameworks that guided the committee’s process. Next, the article describes the results of the committee’s systematic review, which aimed to identify the core components of programs and interventions that are effective across a variety of adolescent health behaviors and outcomes. The final section of this article presents a subset of the committee’s recommendations and promising approaches that can be useful to the diverse readership of this journal.
Highlights
Adolescence is a critical developmental period when youth develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will help them to thrive throughout life. Adolescents may learn these skills through prevention or intervention programs, which capitalize on the formative changes that occur during adolescence
The second section summarizes the results of the committee’s systematic review, which was intended to identify the core components of programs and interventions that are effective across a variety of adolescent health behaviors and outcomes
The committee felt that this concept of seeking opportunities for growth under changing circumstances helped to make the important link to adolescent health and development, when exploration, risk taking, and experimentation play critical roles for brain and identity development
Summary
Adolescence is a critical developmental period when youth develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will help them to thrive throughout life. No program is “one-size-fits-all,” and too often these programs target specific risk behaviors instead of considering the needs of the whole person These types of programs fail to understand the diverse experiences of youth as they move from adolescence through adulthood, and rarely take into account the context, communities, resources, or individual differences (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender identity, disability, etc.) that affect these experiences. The final section of this article presents a subset of the committee’s recommendations and promising approaches that are useful to the diverse readership of this journal
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