Improving the Health of Children and Youth: Frameworks for Behavioral Research and Development

I’m sure that all of you are familiar with the comparison of the leading causes of death during the early 1900s and during the last two decades as shown in Table l. 1 The collected reasons for this dramatic shift in disease patterns have been called the first public health revolution. That revolution occurred largely as a result of scientific research that led us to understand primarily biological and environmental risk factors that are associated with infectious diseases. We’ve been able to apply that research and consequently control major infectious diseases to the point now where non-infectious (or chronic) diseases and traumatic injuries caused by violent means (that is, accidents, suicide, and homicide) are the major health problems of our age.