Children and Adolescent Health-Related Behaviors

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Education about health is extremely important to promote a healthy population. It has been seen that a person’s increased interest and endeavor to learn more about their own health has led to better health choices such as adhering to medical prescriptions and making positive lifestyle choices. Information that is accessible to the population about their health can come from multiple sources including directly from health professionals, scholarly articles, books, and websites. The WHO has provided information through a cross-national study titled “Health Behavior in School-aged Children” that assessed the health behavior of children aged 11, 13, and 15 over a period of 30 years across 45 countries. Several concerns surrounding negative health behaviors were raised in this report such as extensive use of social media, physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and lack of communication with their families. Children and adolescents are deemed to be more vulnerable to exposure to information or misinformation on health that is found online and shared through social media, not to mention that many of these heavily-utilized sources reporting on health information are of poor quality and/or not credible.

This Research Topic aims to bring together manuscripts discussing the health behaviors of children and adolescents and how health education and promotion may influence their health behaviors. It is important that good practice is encouraged from a young age to form these positive behaviors that will be present later in life. Health education programs are in place in different ways for each country and region which will be explored further in this Research Topic. The WHO report suggests that health inequalities, particularly in adolescents, is a cause for concern worldwide, and they make a call for more robust research in this field.

Sub-themes that are relevant to this Research Topic include, but are not limited to:

• Children and Adolescent’s understanding of their own health

• Children and Adolescent reporting mental health concerns

• Current educational frameworks and the effects on the health of children and adolescents

• Programs to encourage positive health behaviors for children and adolescences

• School programs to educate students surrounding poor health and disease

• Understanding the current health education of children and adolescents nationally and regionally

• Substance use in children and adolescents and their knowledge surrounding the associated risks

• Children and Adolescents' understanding of oral health and dental hygiene education

Keywords: children, adolescents, health behavior, health promotion, education programs, health information

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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