Promoting healthy adolescent behavior and development: issues in the design and evaluation of effective youth programs.

The problems of health and development faced by contemporary adolescents require that our communities have greater access to effective, adequately scaled, and sustained youth-serving programs. These 3 dimensions of youth programs are discussed, and the role of evaluations is specified, especially those aimed at program improvement and community empowerment, in facilitating efforts to promote the positive development of young people. These areas of development include competence, confidence, character, connection, and caring/compassion-the "five C's" of positive youth development. Ten features of effective positive youth development programs are described, and the importance of engaging policymakers in order to broadly disseminate and sustain effective programs is stressed. Copyright 2002, Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.