Healthy Youth Development: Science and Strategies

Research over the past decade indicates that healthyyouth development strategies—the deliberate processof providing all youth with the support, relationships, experiences, resources, and opportunities needed to become successful and competent adults—are promising approaches for preventing or reducing a wide range of adolescent health-risk behaviors. In this article, we describe the history, science, and practice of healthy youth development. First, a brief overview of barriers to healthy youth development including obstacles the United States will face in the coming decades for meetings the needs of all youth is provided. We present the history of resiliency research that illuminated the concepts “risk factors,” “protective factors, ” and “healthy youth development, ” and provide definitions of each of these concepts. Next, we discuss select empirical evidence supporting youth development strategies and highlight the events and experiences in the lives of youth that have been consistently shown to protect youth against a broad range of health-risk behaviors. Finally, we describe elements of effective interventions for promoting the healthy development of all young people. KEY WORDS: adolescents, health-risk behaviors, healthy youth development, protective factors, risk factors Recent research suggests that healthy youth devel-opment strategies are promising approaches for pre-venting a wide range of adolescent health-risk be-haviors. Healthy youth development strategies are grounded in the premise that youth are “resources to be developed, rather than problems to be solved,”1 and can be defined as deliberate processes of provid-ing youth with the support, relationships, experiences, resources, and opportunities needed to become suc-cessful and competent adults.2 Research across multi