The overall aims of this exploratory center for health behavior research with children and adolescents are to initiate multidisciplinary studies of health behaviors and to refine and expand a framework for understanding the process through which children and adolescents develop, maintain, and change health behaviors and the factors influencing this process. The particular focus of this Center is on vulnerable children and adolescents, defined as youth who may be a risk for poor health behaviors and health outcomes because of socioeconomic, ethnic, behavioral, and health reasons. The long-term goal is o identify ways to assist these vulnerable youth to establish and maintain health behaviors. Specifically, the Center's aims are: (1) To examine the development of health behaviors in vulnerable children and adolescents, including the processes involved in initiation, maintenance, and change in these behaviors; (2) To examine the influences of individual, familial, and environmental factors on the initiation, maintenance, and change of health behaviors; (3) To refine and expand a framework for understanding the process through which youth develop, maintain, and change health behaviors and the individual and family characteristics and environmental factors that influence these behaviors; (4) To develop and test nursing and other interventions to assist vulnerable children and adolescents to establish and maintain healthy behaviors; (5) To disseminate information to clinicians and other researchers about the health behaviors of children and adolescents and about interventions to assist vulnerable youth to establish and maintain healthy behaviors; (6) To develop public policy related to health behaviors and health outcomes in children and adolescents. Operationally, through its Directors, Advisory Committee, Scientific Committee, Scientific Committee and Center Investigators, the Center will fund and conduct small scale and pilot projects examining the development of health behaviors in vulnerable children and adolescents; provide scientific support and consultation to center investigators; conduct a series of research training seminars in relevant substantive and methodological topics; assist center investigators in seeking funding for studies emanating from the Center supported pilot projects; develop and evaluate policy implications for selected outcomes; and evaluate models for the dissemination of findings. Five studies examining the development of health behaviors in vulnerable youth have been selected for funding beginning in the Center's first year. They are: Project 1: A Longitudinal Investigation of Health Behaviors and Outcomes in Children and Adolescents; Project 2: The Developmental Maturation of Health Responsibility and Behaviors in Children; Project 3: Health Behavior, Health Problems, and Health Problems, and Health Utilization in Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Children; Project 4: Teaching Breast Health to Adolescent Daughters of Women Recently Diagnosed with Breast Cancer: A Teachable Moment? Project 5: Familial Components of Exercise Behavior and Fitness. Additional studies are proposed for funding in year 2, and campus-wide calls will solicit additional projects for funding and the participation of additional investigators in subsequent years.
