Adolescent Health

Through SCAA’s work on disconnected youth and youth within various child-serving systems, the connection between health, academic achievement and economic self-sufficiency is evident. Good health both in the early years and in adolescence improves school enrollment and retention, enhances the ability to learn and makes students more productive.

Adolescents are often thought of as healthy but, while most make the transition to adulthood in good health, others do not. Poverty, broken homes, and foster care experiences contribute to health problems and risky behaviors with consequences that often don’t show up until adulthood. For example, tobacco use, infections from sexually transmitted disease, poor eating and lack of exercise can lead to illness or premature death later in life. Adolescent health also has an intergenerational component. When adolescents have babies, those children are at a higher risk for poor health outcomes and are likely to suffer from the same economic and social hardships as their young parents.

Following SCAA's December 2009 release of Risking Their Future: Understanding the Health Behaviors of Foster Care Youth, this webpage was created as a resource to bring adolescent health information to the many SCAA colleagues and partner organizations working with teens and young adults.

                                                                  Websites:

ACT For Youth Center of Excellence, New York State Department of Health
ACT for Youth Center of Excellence provides resources for youth serving professionals on various topics, including youth development, general adolescent health, adolescent sexual health, organizational capacity to serve adolescents and various other topics. Proceedings of the Feb. 2009 Adolescent Sexual Health Symposium. A New Vision for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health, Research Facts and Findings.

Add Health
Initiated in 1994, Add Health is the largest, most comprehensive longitudinal survey of adolescents ever undertaken. Beginning with an in-school questionnaire administered to a nationally representative sample of students in grades 7-12, the study followed up with a series of in-home interviews conducted in 1994-95, 1996, 2001-02, and 2007-08. Other sources of data include questionnaires for parents, siblings, fellow students, and school administrators and interviews with romantic partners. Preexisting databases provide information about neighborhoods and communities.

Adolescent Health and Youth Development, National Center for Children in Poverty, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

There are over 25 million adolescents in the United States, and nearly nine million currently live in low-income households, while close to four million live in households at or below the federal poverty level. Adolescents, particularly those from low-income households, have unique needs and vulnerabilities in a number of areas, including mental health, sexual and reproductive health, substance use, violence and risk-taking behaviors, and nutrition and obesity. NCCP's Improving the Odds for Adolescents project is designed to provide states with the information they need to strengthen existing policies, build capacity among adolescent health stakeholders, and shift public discourse and policy efforts towards a more evidence-based understanding of adolescent health and development.

Adolescent Health Project, Columbia University, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
The Adolescent Health Project focuses on exploring adolescent health behavior across a wide array of health outcomes, including the transition to first sex, the structure of sexual and romantic networks, STD diffusion dynamics, abuse in adolescent relationships, attachment to school, adolescent suicidality, and same-sex attraction.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
During the transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescents establish patterns of behavior and make lifestyle choices that affect both their current and future health. Adolescents and young adults are adversely affected by serious health and safety issues such as motor vehicle accidents, violence, substance use, and sexual behavior. They also struggle to adapt behaviors that could decrease their risk of developing chronic diseases in adulthood— behaviors such as eating nutritiously, engaging in physical activity, and choosing not to use tobacco. Environmental factors such as family, peer group, school, and community characteristics also contribute to the challenges that adolescents face.

National Adolescent Health Information Center, University of California, San Francisco
The overall goal of NAHIC is to improve the health of adolescents by serving as a national resource for adolescent health information and research, and to assure the integration, synthesis, coordination and dissemination of adolescent health-related information. The NAHIC site contains the Data Project to Improve Adolescent and Young Adult Health: National and State Profiles. This database presents national- and state-level profiles of key measures of adolescent and young adult health based on Healthy People 2010, the nation's public health agenda.

National Resource Center for Permanency Planning and Family Connections (NRCPFC), at the Hunter College School of Social Work focuses on increasing the capacity and resources of State, Tribal, and other publicly supported child welfare agencies to promote family-centered practices that contribute to the safety, permanency, and well-being of children while meeting the needs of their families. The NRCPFC helps States and Tribes to implement strategies to expand knowledge, increase competencies, and change attitudes of child welfare professionals at all levels, with the goal of infusing family-centered principles and practices in their work with children, youth and families who enter the child welfare system. They have a Pregnant and Parenting Teens webpage

Shoulder to Shoulder: Raising Teens Together, a project of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health (MIPH)
Shoulder to Shoulder is dedicated to making your job easier by connecting parents and caregivers and sharing the insights of those who have been there before. From written resources and a Blog for parents of teens to relevant research and parenting tips, we hope you find our resources useful as you navigate the teen years with your child.

Start Strong, Building Healthy Teen Relationships. A national initiative of the Family Violence Prevention Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Start Strong aims to promote healthy relationships as the way to prevent teen dating violence and abuse. Focusing on young teens (11-14 years), the initiative has launched a national conversation about healthy relationships.

The Guttmacher Institute advances sexual and reproductive health in the United States and worldwide through an interrelated program of social science research, policy analysis and public education designed to generate new ideas, encourage enlightened public debate, promote sound policy and program development and, ultimately, inform individual decision making. The Guttmacher Institute has an Adolescents webpage.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy seeks to improve the well-being of children, youth, families, and the nation by preventing unplanned and teen pregnancy. They support a combination of responsible values and behavior by both men and women and responsible policies in both the public and private sectors. The National Campaign has a very comprehensive website.


                                              Reports / Policy Briefs / Fact Sheets:

Sexually Transmitted Diseases among Young Adults: Prevalence, Perceived Risk, and Risk-Taking Behaviors
Child Trends Research Brief, May 2010.

Bricks, Mortar, and Community: The Foundations of Supportive Housing for Pregnant and Parenting Teens,
The Core Components of Supportive Housing
Healthy Teen Network and Child Trends report.

Bricks, Mortar, and Community: The Foundations of Supportive Housing for Pregnant and Parenting Teens,
Findings from the Field

Healthy Teen Network and Child Trends report.

Socio-Economic and Family Characteristics of Teen Childbearing
A project of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, September 2009.

Risking Their Future: Understanding the Health Behaviors of Foster Care Youth
Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy. December 2009.

THAT'S WHAT HE SAID: WHAT GUYS THINK ABOUT SEX, LOVE, CONTRACEPTION, AND RELATIONSHIPS
National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Seventeen magazine survey. 2010.

The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families
Institute of Medicine. March 6, 2006.

Adolescents—At Risk for Sexually Transmitted Infections
Advocates for Youth. January 2003.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention, Making A Difference for At-Risk Populations
National Conference of State Legislatures. 2009.