Positive youth development requires comprehensive health promotion programs

We need to link prevention and health promotion with success in school and life. To date, most prevention, health promotion, character education, and social-emotional learning programs (and research) neglect the obvious link with academic achievement. Researchers who state that improved behavior might lead to improved school performance are rare; exceptions include 2 groups of prevention researchers,1,2 a character education researcher,3 and social-emotional learning researchers.4 Health behavior and prevention researchers more often remind us that poor performance in elementary school predicts poor behavior in adolescence. We need to go far beyond these few statements and recognize that all good education needs to include content and programs to develop positive and successful youth. This need is urgent in our society today, as the public and politicians demand more accountability. Most education dollars today are targeted to improving basic reading, writing, and math skills, and conducting testing to determine if learning i