It makes sense to have well-planned, research based approaches to adolescent health and education, which can be incorporated into the curriculum by teachers, within the normal context of the school. Daniel Shek and his collaborators make this point extremely well in this important new book on Positive Youth Development. In a detailed manner that is rare in the international literature, the studies described in this book examine the various factors that influence the quality of health promotion program implementation (5 "Ps": program, people, process, policy and place).

A team of researchers from five universities in Hong Kong have constructed a comprehensive positive youth development package for junior secondary school students in Hong Kong. This project is called P.A.T.H.S. (Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programs) and the package focuses on various aspects of positive youth development used by more than 250 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Research has been performed on the effectiveness and educational implications of the teaching package, which opened a new page of study in the field of whole-person education and youth education in Chinese societies. In view of the data collected so far, the teaching package is well received by students, teachers and educators in Hong Kong. The new curriculum covered in this book is closely related to the emerging adolescent developmental issues in Hong Kong and the global contexts.