Child and Adolescent Health

Last update: 5 November 2009,
by Maureen Bell

I've divided this page into two sections. The first provides you with some tips on searching for material on Medline, and the second provides links to other Australian and overseas web resources, including some full text material. As accidents and injuries are a major cause of death or disability in young people I've included some links on this subject.

You'll also find material that may interest you on my child and adolescent psychiatry page,
on my drug and alcohol abuse page,
on my suicide and self-injurious behaviour page,
and on my violence, aggression, and dangerous behaviour page

Searching Medline

You will find material on adolescent health issues in Medline, but you will need to be aware of the thesaurus (MeSH) terms used to search for this group of people.

Sometimes you will find the age factor as part of the term - for example Pregnancy in Adolescence, while at others you will need to add the age category to the name of a health problem.

One of Medline's great advantages is its list of age groups which you can use when searching. You will find these listed in the Mesh Database.

MeSH Age Groups List

Many topics in MeSH have hierarchies of more specific subcategories or related terms. The indentations in the lists reflect the structure of the hierarchy, and the + signs at the end of terms indicate that there is a further hierarchy of terms not displayed here. Any of these terms can be searched individually, or you can "explode" terms to search sections of the list.

Below is a simple example of a search for articles on teenage pregnancy

Teenage Pregnancy is not a MeSH term. The MeSH term is Pregnancy in Adolescence

PubMed Search Formulation

This search is very broad and will retrieve all articles on teenage pregnancy from the Medline database.

Click here to see how it works. PubMed search.

The second search example includes a problem or disease category, plus an age limit.

PubMed Search Formulation

This search will retrieve articles on obesity in adolescents.

Click here to see how it works PubMed search

You may sometimes want to exclude adults and children. You may want to find articles which deal only with adolescents NOT articles which deal with adolescents, children and adults too. In this case you could just add

NOT (adult[mh] OR child[mh])

PubMed's default setting is to "explode" all terms, and so it would exclude adults, including middle aged and older people, and children, including preschool children as well as children aged between 6 and 12.

Australian Sources

Alcohol-Related Injury in Young Males
By Malinda Steenkamp, James Harrison, and Steve Allsop. Canberra, Australian Institute of health and Welfare, 2002.

Child and Youth Health | Australian Medical Association

Child and Youth Health and Wellbeing (AIHW)
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare portal for child and youth health.

Children's Health and Development: New Research Directions for Australia
By Ann Sanson. Australian Institute of Family Studies. Research Report no.8, 2002.

Health Report - Child Health
Transcripts from Radio National's Health Report, with Norman Swan.

Health Report - Youth
Transcripts from Radio National's Health Report, with Norman Swan.

National Health and Medical Research Council - Publications - Child health

A picture of Australia's children 2009 (AIHW)

A Social Health Atlas of Young South Australians
A Social Health Atlas of Young South Australians. 2nd. edition, by Sarah Tennant, Diana Hetzel and John Glover. Adelaide, Public Health Information Development Unit, 2003.

Young Adult Health
From the South Australian government's Child and Youth Health. This site contains health information for young people.

Youth Health
The Commonwealth government's youth heath page.

Overseas Sources

Accidental injury, risk-taking behaviour and the social circumstances in which young people (aged 12-24) live: a systematic review
By J Thomas, J Kavanagh, H Tucker, H Burchett, J Tripney, and A Oakley London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, February 2007. Other reports of interest for child and adolescent health are available from EPPI-Centre published reviews

Adolescent Health Services: Missing Opportunities
Committee on Adolescent Health Care Services and Models of Care for Treatment, Prevention, and Healthy Development, National Research Council. Robert S. Lawrence, Jennifer Appleton Gootman, Leslie J. Sim, editors. Washington D.C., National Academies Press, 2009.

AMA-Adolescent Health
A collection of useful resources from the American Medical Association's (AMA) Program on Child and Adolescent Health.

Child and Adolescent Health and Development
Resources from the WHO Department of Child and Adolescent health and Development (CAH)

Child Health Specialist Library
One of a collection of specialist libraries for the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) in the U.K.

Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth: Assessing and improving Child Health
Committee on Evaluation of Children's Health, National Research Council. Washington D.C., National Academies Press, 2004.

EPPI-Centre published reviews
The full text of a number of reports on the health of young people can be found here. The EPPI-Centre is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the University of London.

Health and Health Behaviour Among Young People
A report published in 2000 by WHO, based on a 1997-98 survey of over 120,000 students. It is part of an ongoing cross-national study, Health Behaviors in School-Aged Children (HBSC). (WHO Policy Series: Health Policy for Children and Adolescents; No. 1)

Health Survey for England 2002: The Health of Children and Young People
A survey carried out on behalf of The Department of Health. Edited by Kerry Sprotson and Paola Primatesta, Joint Health Surveys Unit National Centre for Social Research, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Royal Free and University College Medical School.

HealthyYouth. Publications and Links
From the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the United States.

HealthyYouth. YRBSS - Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
From the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the United States.YRBSS monitors six categories of priority health-risk behaviors among youth and young adults at the national, state, and local levels.

MedlinePlus: Teen Health
MEDLINEplus is the National Library of Medicine's consumer health information portal. Lists of links are evaluated/reviewed/quality-filtered.

The National Academies Press: Children's Health
Free full text monographs from National Academies Press in the United States.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)
This study comes from the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was commenced in 1994/1995.

Promoting Better Health for Young People Through Physical Activity and Sports
A Report to the President from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Secretary of Education, Fall 2000.

Schools for Health in Europe | Publications

Teen Risk-Taking: A Statistical Portrait
By Laura Duberstein Lindberg, Scott Boggess, Laura Porter, and Sean Williams. Washington D.C., Urban Institute, 2000.

• population, family, and neighborhood;
• economic security;
• health conditions and health care;
• social development, behavioral health, and teen fertility; and
• education and achievement

Young People’s Health in Context. Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study: international report from the 2001/2002 survey
Edited by Candace Currie ... [et al.].
(WHO Policy Series: Health Policy for Children and Adolescents ; No. 4 , 2004)