Open Access in JAH
Effects of a Patient-Centered Intervention to Reduce Alcohol Use Among Youth With Chronic Medical Conditions
Alcohol poses unique risks for youth with chronic medical conditions (YCMC) yet many drink. Preventive interventions targeting YCMC are scarce.Leveraging Technology to Improve Health in Adolescence: A Developmental Science Perspective
As technologies continue to evolve at exponential rates, online platforms are becoming an increasingly salient social context for adolescents. Adolescents are often early adopters, savvy users, and innovators of technology use. This not only creates new vulnerabilities but also presents new opportunities for positive impact—particularly, the use of technology to promote healthy learning and adaptation during developmental windows of opportunity. For example, early adolescence appears to represent a developmental inflection point in health trajectories and in technology use in ways that may be strategically targeted for prevention and intervention.Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Preventive Adolescent Healthcare
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new opportunities for personalizing technology-based health interventions to adolescents. This article provides a computer science perspective on how emerging AI technologies—intelligent learning environments, interactive narrative generation, user modeling, and adaptive coaching—can be utilized to model adolescent learning and engagement and deliver personalized support in adaptive health technologies. Many of these technologies have emerged from human-centered applications of AI in education, training, and entertainment.Fostering Engagement in Health Behavior Change: Iterative Development of an Interactive Narrative Environment to Enhance Adolescent Preventive Health Services
Accidents and unintentional injuries account for the greatest number of adolescent deaths, often involving use of alcohol and other substances. This article describes the iterative design and development of Interactive Narrative System for Patient-Individualized Reflective Exploration (INSPIRE), a narrative-centered behavior change environment for adolescents focused on reducing alcohol use. INSPIRE is designed to serve as an extension to clinical preventive care, engaging adolescents in a theoretically grounded intervention for health behavior change by leveraging 3D game engine and interactive narrative technologies.
