Health Issues and Adolescents: Growing Up, Speaking Out. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2001

SHUCKSMITH, Janet, & HENDRY, Leo B. Health Issues and Adolescents: Growing Up, Speaking Out. New York: Routledge, 1998. 165pp. $65.00 (h), $20.99 (p).

Most research and policy agendas relating to young people are dominated by adult concerns about young people's health; rarely are the issues looked at from young people's perspectives. Numerous public health campaigns target young people's drinking, smoking, drug-taking, and sexual behavior, despite the fact that this is the segment of the population with the lowest morbidity and mortality of any age. Do young people themselves share this concern about their health? This gap in our knowledge may be a critical factor in explaining some of the problems that health educators face in getting young people to transform health knowledge into action. With their own research as a base, Shucksmith and Hendry set adult agendas to one side and explore young people's own views about their health and health behaviors. They provide recommendations about initiatives relevant to a wide range of professionals and researchers involved in the health education of young people. Chapters include: young people's perceptions of their own health needs; "giving a voice to children"--exploring young people's own agendas on health; "you look in all these magazines and you see all these supermodels . . ."--body image, appearance and health; "down the Yoker"--the impact of localism on young people's health beliefs and actions; "I don't listen to everything she says..."--family influences on young people's health beliefs; "I sort of get pushed into things"--peer pressure and young people's beliefs in their own "agency" with respect to health; "it's a balance"--young people speak out about health risk areas in their lives; conclusions--"I'm not going to do anything stupid!"