Promoting Adolescent Health: A Dialog on Research and Practice is a collection of essays that discusses the insights provided by professionals into the problems of encouraging adolescent health. The book presents the open dialog between the views of pediatrics, cardiologists, psychologists, health educators, sociologists, and nutrition scientists.
The text gives discussions from a variety of perspectives on each of six problem areas: smoking, drugs and alcohol, sexuality, coronary risk factors, health-risk eating behaviors, and chronic disease. It also discusses the factors influential in smoking onset and describes the examination of health education and health promotion, adolescent medicine, developmental psychology, education, and research methodology.
The book will provide valuable insights for anthropologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, students, and researchers in the field of adolescent behaviors.

ContributorsForewordPrefaceI. Crossing the Barriers 1. Crossing the Barriers 2. Adolescent Health: Issues and Challenges 3. Adolescent Health in the United States as We Enter the 1980s 4. Developmental Issues in Adolescent Health 5. Adolescent Health: An Educational-Ecological Perspective 6. Investigating Adolescent Health Promotion: Crossing Research BarriersII. Smoking Introduction and Overview 7. Control and Prevention of Smoking in Adolescents: A Psychosocial Perspective 8. Broadening the Focus of Smoking Prevention Strategies 137 9. Untested and Erroneous Assumptions Underlying Antismoking ProgramsIII. Drugs and Alcohol Introduction and Overview 10. The Prevention of Teenage Substance Use: Longitudinal Research and Strategy 11. Adolescent Drinking: Issues and Research 201 12. Issues in the Development of Effective Prevention Practices 225IV. Sexuality Introduction and Overview 13. Adolescent Sexuality 14. Adolescents as Parents: Possible Long-Range Implications 15. Adolescent Sexuality: Whose Responsibility Is It?V. Coronary Risk Factors Introduction and Overview 16. Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Children and Coronary-Related Behavior 17. Stress and Heart Disease: Does Blood Pressure Reactivity Offer a Link?VI. Health-Risk Eating Behaviors Introduction and Overview 18. Dietary Studies of Infants and Children: The Bogalusa Heart Study 19. Nutrition Education Research: Fast or Famine? 20. Factors Influencing Dietary Habits: Experiences of the Oslo Youth Study 21. Anorexia Nervosa and BulimiaVII. Chronic Disorders and Chronicity Introduction and Overview 22. Conceptual Barriers to the Treatment of Chronic Disease: Using Pediatric Hypertension as an Example 23. Living with Chronic IllnessVIII. Critical Issues in Research on Adolescent Health Promotion 24. Critical Issues in Research on Adolescent Health PromotionAuthor IndexSubject Index