While doctors understand that adolescents have certain unique health questions and concerns, several challenges prevent this critical information from being collected in a systematic way and providing appropriate referrals across a wide group of patients. Now, newly published research from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) describes a useful and effective adolescent health questionnaire that has been successfully adapted across CHOP's Primary Care Network which allows clinical staff to have better discussions with appropriately aged patients and develop better intervention strategies when needed. The findings were recently published in the journal Pediatrics .
Nutrition, physical activity, relationships, school, tobacco, alcohol and drug use, mental health, sexual behavior, gender identity, safety, and strengths are all important topics to discuss with adolescents during preventive care visits with their pediatricians. However, discussions about these topics remain consistently low due to a variety of factors, such as confidentiality concerns, lack of time during appointments, and a discomfort among patients and parents to address some of these topics. Discussions about sensitive health issues can be difficult to engage in face-to-face with a doctor, which can often lead to discrepancies in data.
For example, only 1-2% of adolescents report tobacco use to doctors, yet the U.S. Centers for Disease Control report e-cigarette use at about 8% of youths, suggesting doctor.
