Using Technology to Improve Clinical Counseling of Adolescent Risky Behaviors

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this SBIR is to develop an innovative adolescent primary health care delivery model for use in primary care that overcomes barriers of health care provider time, skill and teen engagement when providing effective tobacco use reduction counseling. This will be achieved by creating a web-based counseling module that will provide interactive, technology-driven tobacco reduction counseling to adolescents, individualized to their positive responses to tobacco useon the Rapid Assessment for Adolescent Preventive Services (c) (RAAPS) risk behavior screening tool. Significance: Nearly 75 percent of adolescent morbidity and mortality is a result of risky behaviors that cost hundreds of billions of healthcare dollars annually. Tobacco usage represents an especially crucial risk behavior to address as 90 percent of tobacco addiction begins during adolescence. Comprehensive autonomous web-based risk screening and counseling represents an excellent opportunity to over