Expanding Our Horizons: Risk, Protection, and Intervention in Emerging Adulthood

Prevention science research has focused on early childhood and early school years, on the logic that addressing individual and contextual risk factors as early as possible would prevent the compounding of risk downstream. Methodological and technological advances have opened the door to an expanded exploration of risk, health promotion, and intervention in emerging adulthood and throughout the lifespan, but prevention science remains dominated by research on early childhood and adolescence. Articles in this special issue of Prevention Science showcase the use of new technologies to access young adult populations and to develop and deliver interventions as well as strategies to help account for developmental and cultural contexts in designing interventions. The issue represents an important step forward in applying the preventive research cycle to emerging adulthood, and it provides an opportunity to expand our horizons by building theories of development that are not tied solely to age progression.