Adolescent medicine: a model for the millennium.

Abstract

This article summarizes the past decade of technological development and the past century of adolescent development in order to predict the future of adolescent medicine. The technology of communication will revolutionize behavior change approaches in the 21st century. Health will be seen as an interactive loop of connections between patients, physicians, families, institutions, peers, and support networks that may be voluntarily navigated and searched. The low-tech of counseling will be replaced with the high-tech of the interactive sensor that will be developed from our knowledge of human development. The inter-relationships between social and personal ecology-a basic premise of adolescent health care-will take on new importance in the first decade of the 21st century. The old will guide the application; the new will define the science. The major morbidities of adolescence of the 20th century will now be correctable and preventable. Models of care for all age groups will draw heavily on the experience of ephebiatrics. With application of the new science, biobehavioral issues will surface as the new technology and the practitioners of adolescent health care have the potential to lead the way.