Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.u.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.org for future podcast episodes.

It's Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Lisa Lawson is the president and chief executive officer of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

She's also the author of a new book on The Science of Adolescence.

She joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about how adolescents are misunderstood

and how a better understanding of their brain development can lead to much more successful outcomes.

Let's listen.

Lisa Lawson, thank you so much for joining me today

on Public Health On Call to talk about your new book, which is entitled Thrive, how the science of

the adolescent brain helps us imagine a better future for all children. How's today going for you?

It's going great. Thanks so much for having me. So it might be helpful if you could explain a little bit about yourself and how you came to write a book about adolescents.

And you're not allowed to say that it's because you were an adolescent one day.

We all have been.

I lead the Annie E.KC Foundation, a national philanthropy that focuses on creating a brighter future for all children.

As a part of that mission, we try to support young people across all of their developmental stages,

not just from birth in the early years, but through the fullness of adolescence, which lasts until young people are about 25 years old.

As I was doing this work, I realized that

teenagers and young adults were often left out of the national conversation, that people often

focus so much on those early years. They fail to think about the ways they could help young people

...