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This book presents a detailed and updated review of the widespread changes that take place during adolescence, adopting a preventive perspective that reflects physical, social, cognitive, and emotional changes. It addresses a broad range of aspects, including: the preventive programs and their systemic effects; the role of environment in influencing the healthy behaviors of adolescents and young adults; the use of e-Health technology in health and behavioral interventions for adolescents; and the clinical and prognostic implications of primordial prevention in healthy adolescents. All of these elements are subsequently reviewed using a multidimensional approach, in order to offer extensive information on the complex changes that characterize adolescents' physiological, psychological, and neurobiological development.
In addition, the book depicts the preventive strategies currently used in various social settings (school, family, sport club, health policies) aimed not only at reducing lifestyle risk behaviors, but also at improving resilience, happiness, social involvement, self-esteem, and sociability. This update is essential in the light of the fact that, to date, prevention has mainly been directed towards adolescents with physical or mental disorders rather than their healthy peers. As such, the book offers a valuable tool for pediatricians, child and adolescents psychiatrists, and for all professionals involved in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
List of contents
Part I: Primordial prevention: General Aspects.- 1. Preventive strategies: past, present and future.- 2. Fetal Programming of Adult Disease in a Translational Point of View.- 3. Physical activity and wellbeing.- 4. Dietary habit and quality.- 5. Biochemical markers in primordial prevention: premises and promises.- Part II: Adolescents' mental health and well-being.- 6. Perinatal influences on neurodevelopment: The role of epigenetics.- 7. The role of environmental enrichment on neurodevelopment.- 8. Relationship between emotions, sleep and wellbeing.- 9. Empowering adolescents with life skills education.- Part III: Adolescence and the Social Determinants of Health.- 10. Family and Community.- 11. School.- 12. Peers.- Part IV: The digital era in adolescent's health and well-being.- 13. Adolescence between past and future.- 14. e-Health strategies.- 15. Experiences and perspectives of the game in health programs: controversial issues.- 16. New perspectives for multidisciplinary and integrated strategies of adolescent health and wellbeing.
About the author
Alessandro Pingitore works as a scientist at the Institute of Clinical Physiology (National Research Council), Pisa, Italy. His main research fields are the assessment of cardiac function and morphology by means of non-invasive cardiac imaging, the relationship between thyroid hormone and the heart, and the physiological response to strenuous physical stress in normal and extreme environments. He is responsible for the AVATAR project, an Italian multicenter study for the promotion and evaluation of health and wellbeing among healthy adolescents. He is the author of 138 articles published in international peer-reviewed journals, 2 books, and 10 book chapters.
Francesca Mastorci graduated with a degree in Biology and Biomedical Science, subsequently receiving her PhD in Systemic Physiopathology for a study of the physiological and psychological effects of exposure to stressors in experimental animal models and humans. Her chief research interest is in psychophysiologicalstress response and its countermeasures using standardized protocols, including the analysis of high density EEG in humans, autonomic, endocrine and metabolic measurements, and the study of nonverbal behaviors in different stages of life, with a particular focus on adolescence through the AVATAR project. She is the author of 25 articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.
Cristina Vassalle currently serves at the “G. Monasterio Foundation CNR-Regione Toscana” center in Pisa, Italy. She is a Member of the Società Italiana Biochimica Clinica e Biologia Molecolare Working Group on “Biochimica clinica e metabolismo osseo e muscolare”. Her main research interest is in cardiovascular and bone biology, with a particular emphasis on studying biomarkers of risk. She has considerable expertise in the field of Clinical Laboratory Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Cardiovascular and Bone Physiopathology. She has published more than 100 between papers in internationalpeer-reviewed journals and contributes in monographs and books.
Summary
This book presents a detailed and updated review of the widespread changes that take place during adolescence, adopting a preventive perspective that reflects physical, social, cognitive, and emotional changes. It addresses a broad range of aspects, including: the preventive programs and their systemic effects; the role of environment in influencing the healthy behaviors of adolescents and young adults; the use of e-Health technology in health and behavioral interventions for adolescents; and the clinical and prognostic implications of primordial prevention in healthy adolescents. All of these elements are subsequently reviewed using a multidimensional approach, in order to offer extensive information on the complex changes that characterize adolescents’ physiological, psychological, and neurobiological development.
In addition, the book depicts the preventive strategies currently used in various social settings (school, family, sport club, health policies) aimed not only at reducing lifestyle risk behaviors, but also at improving resilience, happiness, social involvement, self-esteem, and sociability. This update is essential in the light of the fact that, to date, prevention has mainly been directed towards adolescents with physical or mental disorders rather than their healthy peers. As such, the book offers a valuable tool for pediatricians, child and adolescents psychiatrists, and for all professionals involved in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
