How can we encourage adolescents to follow healthy behaviors? Any ideas for parents, healthcare providers, health educators, media, society, etc?

Encouraging adolescents to follow healthy behaviors can be very challenging, especially in the new advanced world we live in today.  It all points out to how and what our values, cultures and beliefs may be when it comes to health and the health of others.  Health behaviors may be attained from seeing it in everyday life but may not necessary lead in the right path.  We have to look at what are adolescents reaching out to and work through that path.  Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, cell phones, emails, can all lead to our adolescents.  Why not use these tools to encourage?  If they don't seek the information, then lets find a way to send it to them.  We can also lead by example, we all heard the phrase "practice what you preach" and that is exactly what needs to be done to encourage not our adolescents. Networking through adolescent organizations and possibly marketing it using everyday stars like Justin Beiber, Hannah Montana, and even cartoons like Sponge Bob square pants can all assist in delivering the message in an undercover way.  Education comes in all shapes and sizes and if we do not learn to adapt with these constant learning curves may be, we might find ourselves with a terrible health conscious future.  Encouraging is part of believing and you must believe in what you are selling.  Markets today hire the best of the best to research and target our adolescents about any product they want to sell to increase their profits, why not do the same by putting our heads together as health educators and reaching a goal to target adolescents on how important health is today.

Dana Anderson