Program Overview
As adolescents transition from childhood to adulthood, they establish behavioral patterns and make lifestyle choices that impact their present and future health. Routine adolescent preventive health care visits are optimal opportunities during which clinicians can proactively address current and forthcoming health-related issues. In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics published an updated edition of Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents. These guidelines emphasize the importance of adolescent preventive health care and include recommendations on the encouragement of positive behaviors such as nutritious eating and regular physical activity, implementation of disease prevention strategies, and education of adolescents and their parents on sexual health and substance abuse issues to contribute to overall physical, mental, and social well being.
Immunization is an essential element of adolescent preventive health care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recently reviewed and revised several of its recommendations on vaccines for adolescents including the influenza vaccine; the meningococcal conjugate vaccine; the tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis vaccine; the varicella vaccine; and the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
Sexual health has become a prominent component of adolescent health care as data from the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey have shown that more than 45% of high school students have had sexual intercourse, 33% are currently sexually active, and approximately 15% have had 4 or more partners. Adolescent risk factors, such as high-risk sexual behavior and an increased physiologic susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections (STIs), highlight the importance of providing sexual health care to this population. However, numerous issues face adolescent sexual health care providers and include patient and parental barriers to immunization for the prevention of STIs (eg, HPV vaccination) and the implementation of public health initiatives (eg, school-based STI screening programs). Adolescent health professionals who proactively address these issues with patients and their parents will positively impact adolescent sexual health.
This symposium will review the adolescent health supervision guidelines in the new edition of Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents, the current ACIP recommendations on adolescent immunization, and various public health initiatives designed to meet the sexual health care needs of adolescents.
