The years of living dangerously (AAFP annual scientific assembly)

There is increasing recognition that this age group is underserved and increasing awareness that for most teenagers, health threats come not from diseases but from their own behaviors.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Nov. 7, 2005.

Reports from conferences important to physicians

When faced with a teenage patient, physicians should take "behavioral vital signs" to track the factors most likely to put teens at risk. The more traditional physical vital signs should still be recorded but are less important in terms of young people's overall well-being. That notion was a key take-home message from several presentations at the American Academy of Family Physicians annual scientific assembly in San Francisco, Sept. 28 to Oct. 2.

"Pulse and blood pressure are not as critical to what may happen to a teen as it is to know if they're smoking, drinking, having sex and those kind of things," said Nicole Chaisson, MD, one of the leaders of a course on the adolescent office visit and a physician at Smiley's Family and Community Residency Medicine Program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. "Most of the causes of adolescent morbidity and mortality are related to behaviors rather than biomedical stuff."

This advice comes along with an increasing recognition that teenagers are significantly underserved by the health care system and have very different health care needs than other age groups. To address the challenge of reaching them, AAFP focused on these patients' treatment needs, along with that of children, by making it the centerpiece of next year's annual clinical focus initiative as well as the focus of a number of the meeting's sessions. This theme was organized in cooperation with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Adolescent Medicine.