Purpose: Review individual, family, and environmental factors that predict health-risk behavior among children and to propose parent-child communication processes as a mechanism to mediate them.
Conclusions: Improving parent-child communication processes may: reduce individual risk factors, such as poor academic achievement or self-esteem; modify parenting practices such as providing regulation and structure and acting as models of health behavior; and facilitate discussion about factors that lead to involvement in health-risk behaviors.
Practice implications: Assessment strategies to identify youth at risk for health-risk behavior are recommended and community-based strategies to improve communication among parents and children need development.