Spotlight Exclusive Interviews on Fulfilling the Promise of Adolescence

Recent behavioral science research has found that adolescence, like early childhood, is a crucial period of development. A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report looks at what this new understanding means for society and makes recommendations for how to improve the education, health, justice and child welfare systems to better meet the needs of youth ages 10-25.

At the release of the report The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth, Spotlight spoke with report authors and stakeholders about how structural inequalities can affect adolescents’ development and opportunity – and what policy can do to help.

Richard Bonnie is the chair of NASEM’s Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications. He is the Harrison Foundation Professor of Medicine and Law and director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Joanna Lee Williams of NASEM’s Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications is an associate professor at the Curry School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.

Margarita Alegría of NASEM’s Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications is the chief of the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Judith Diers of NASEM’s Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications is a program officer for international programs at the Ford Foundation.