The influence of environment

Abstract

The Board on Children, Youth, and Families (BCYF) of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council (NRC) has organized a series of planning meetings, workshops, and consensus studies over the past decade that address different facets of adolescent health and development (see www.bocyf.org). One focus of this work involves threats to adolescent health and well-being that inhere in young people’s inclination to engage in risky and reckless behavior. The board has found considerable evidence that the greatest contributors to morbidity and mortality in adolescence are not disease and illness, but instead such behaviors as unsafe driving; experimentation with alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs; involvement in crime; and unsafe sex. Although significant progress has occurred in the study of adolescent risk-taking, the board observed that findings from this body of work had not been integrated across disciplines (e.g., neuroscience, psychology, sociology, public health) or risk domains (e.g., substance use, sexual risk-taking, delinquency). The board further thought that prevention and health promotion efforts would be informed by a systematic examination of current theory and research on adolescent risk-taking that drew on contributions from multiple disciplines and that focused on different risk behaviors. The first of the three workshops convened by the Committee on the Science of Adolescence focused on the prevalence and nature of adolescent risk-taking and on the potential contributions of the neural, biological, intellectual, and socioemotional developments characteristic of adolescence. The second workshop examined interpersonal, institutional, and contextual influences on adolescent risk behavior. The final workshop integrated lessons learned from the previous two workshops, combining the prior emphases on individual and contextual influences and examining the potential implications of this work for policy and practice.