Despite evidence that preventive counseling from a clinician improves seat belt and helmet use and decreases use of illegal substances and other high-risk behaviors among adolescents, few clinicians provide such counseling.¹

This is in part due to the fact that few screening tools have been developed that are practical in the clinical setting,² although at least one set of clinical practice guidelines has been developed to screen adolescents for risky behavior.³

Use of interactive technologies by both the provider and the patient may be the most effective means of obtaining information about risky behaviors.  One study found that use of a PDA-based screening tool enhances physician counseling and improves adolescents' perceptions of the well visit.⁴ One recent study found that use of computer-assisted screening software (eTouch) was well accepted in an urban, predominately low income, paediatric primary care setting. Satisfaction was generally high and was not associated with sociodemographic factors including race, payor status, or computer experience. Girls and older youths were more satisfied with the system, perhaps because they had slightly more positive views of the system’s ease of use or because of unmeasured differences in literacy.⁵ A 2007 trial of the eTouch came to similar positive conclusions.⁶