Research

Research within the Division of Adolescent Medicine and at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital’s Center for Adolescent Health focuses on understanding and promoting adolescent and young adult health, and preventing engagement in health risk behaviors. 

Our faculty’s and fellow’s research focuses on:

1. Substance use prevention, including identifying individual and social factors contributing to adolescents’ and young adults’ substance use, smoking cessation, and school-based tobacco and marijuana prevention programs;
2. Medical complications of eating disorders including refeeding syndrome, amenorrhea and resumption of menses, bone health in adolescents with eating disorders, diffusion tensor imaging studies and outcomes research;
3. Morbidities associated with the Female Athlete Triad;
4. Sexual and reproductive health, including sexual decision-making and adolescents’ and young adults’ access to and use of contraception and emergency contraception and treatment of sexually transmitted infections;
5. Gender-based violence, including identifying modifiable factors responsible for such violence, and developing and evaluating violence prevention programs both in the United States and internationally;
6. Understanding chronic diseases and transitions of care among those with disease, as well as the behavioral underpinnings and long-term outcomes of those diseases;
7. Ameliorating health disparities among vulnerable populations, including homeless, detained/incarcerated and minority youth.

The research within the Division and Center utilizes a number of methodological and statistical techniques, including community-based participatory research, program development and evaluation, longitudinal studies, and randomized controlled trials. The research in our Division and Center is funded through grants from the NIH, the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, the California Department of Education, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Wellness Foundation, Verizon Foundation, Hedge Funds Care, Inc., California Department of Health Services, and endowments and donations.

^{*Ref: Travis KE, Golden NH, Feldman HM, Solomon M, Nguyen J, Mezer A, Yeatman JD, Dougherty RF. Neuroimage Clin. 2015 Oct 23;9:648-59. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2015.10.008. eCollection 2015.}