Health and well-being during adolescence depends largely on the fit between the young person's developmental needs and desires and opportunities provided by the changing context. In Health Risks and Developmental Transitions, prominent researchers in the adolescent field examine how various developmental transitions associated with the passage from childhood to adulthood provide risks and opportunities for adolescents' mental and physical health. Given the importance of adolescence in determining the course of health and well-being across the life span, efforts to ease the various transitions into and out of adolescence will yield long-term health benefits. By focusing on the link between health risks, developmental transitions, individual and contextual conditions and planned interventions that moderate the link, this interdisciplinary book provides the foundation for a unifying framework for research and application in health and human development.

Prevention and developmental sciences have many complementary goals and much to gain by collaboration. With random assignment to conditions and long-term multivariate follow-up of individuals across significant years in the life span, fundamental basic and applied research questions can now be addressed using new statistical methods. This special issue includes four empirical papers that used growth modeling techniques (hierarchical linear modeling, latent growth curve analyses) to examine direct and indirect effects of theory-based, longitudinal prevention experiments on developmental trajectories of children's and adolescents' substance use, delinquency, and school bonding.

This book focuses on the different developmental transitions during adolescence and young adulthood and relates them to risks and benefits for young people's health and well-being. This book advocates the broadening of the concept of health promotion to include assistance with negotiating the several changes that occur as individuals move into and out of adolescence. Chapters from many of the most prominent researchers in the adolescent field from several countries are included in this edited volume.