Reducing Adolescent Risk: Toward an Integrated Approach

― Robert Wm. Blum, MD, MPH, PhD, Professor and Director, Center for Adolescent Health and Development, University of Minnesota

― Bruce Simons-Morton, EdD, MPH, Chief, Prevention Research Branch Division of Epidemiology, Statistics, and Prevention Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

― Lloyd J. Kolbe, PhD, Director, Division of Adolescent and School Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control And Prevention

"Reducing Adolescent Risk: Toward an Integrated Approach weaves together current research findings with prevailing prevention strategies to shed further light on the developmental pathways leading to a variety of interrelated adolescent risk behaviors. In doing so, the authors skillfully make the case for more integrated policy approaches and for comprehensive programming at the community level that both recognizes the connections between risk behaviors and maximizes young people′s positive potential."

― Karen Pittman, Executive Director, The Forum for Youth Investment & President, Impact Strategies, Inc.

Many risk behaviors have common developmental pathways. However, most prevention strategies approach adolescent risk behaviors as individual problems requiring separate solutions. This policy of treating one behavior at a time encourages a fractured approach to adolescent health.

Reducing Adolescent Risk: Toward an Integrated Approach focuses on common influences that result in a number of interrelated risk behaviors in order to design more unified, comprehensive prevention strategies. Edited by Daniel Romer, this book summarizes presentations and discussions held at the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center. Concentrating on common causes for varied risk behaviors, a group of leading researchers and intervention specialists from different health traditions synthesize current knowledge about risks to adolescent health in several areas, including drugs and alcohol, tobacco, unprotected sex, suicide and depression, and gambling.

Promoting healthy adolescent development, this innovative volume includes

• Results of the National Risk Survey
• Contributions from experts on adolescent decision making and problem solving
• Research agendas for programs that reduce multiple risks
• Potential intervention strategies to reduce more than one risk at a time
• Major findings from the conference that should be pursued in future research

Primarily intended for graduate students, scholars, and researchers in psychology, sociology, social work, and public health, Reducing Adolescent Risk is also an extraordinary resource for policy makers in government organizations and foundations.

Daniel Romer received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1974. He is currently Research Director at the Institute for Adolescent Risk Communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania.