Youth Development and Resilience
About This Focus Area:
Opportunities, relationships, and experiences during adolescence critically shape youths’ trajectories through adulthood. This initiative focuses on how contextual experiences (e.g., families, schools, peers, and communities), normative developmental and psychobiological mechanisms, and the interaction between these two domains promote health, well-being, and resilience among adolescents and young adults. Initiative pursuits span from basic research that seeks to deepen and expand theoretical and guiding principles of adolescent and young adult development to applied science that seeks to enhance thriving and maximize positive development for all young people, particularly those who are members of oppressed groups.