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The inclusion of adolescents and young adults in research is essential if they are to receive the benefits of research, as individuals and as a group.  The ethical inclusion of minor adolescents in health research requires attention to the current regulatory limitations and allowances, legal status of adolescents, an expanded ethical framework for research, cognitive capacity of adolescents to provide informed consent autonomously, and ways to involve communities, parents and trusted adults in the co-design of research and in providing guidance to young people.  Recent (2025) guidelines from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine provide ethical and practical suggestions to researchers and research ethics committees/institutionalreview boards on the ethical conduct of health research with adolescents.

John Santelli, MD, MPH is a Professor of Population and Family Health and Pediatrics at Columbia University in New York.  He trained in Adolescent Medicine at U of Maryland Hospital and received his MPH from Johns Hopkins.  His first “real” job was with the Baltimore City Health Department as Director of School and Adolescent Health.

Dr. Santelli has conducted policy-related research on adolescent health including HIV/STD risk behaviors, teen fertility, socioeconomic determinants, prevention programs, and research ethics. He was a member of the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing.

Working with colleagues at Hopkins, Santelli has been the principal investigator on five NIH-funded projects at the Rakai Health Sciences Program on HIV risk among youth including empirical research bioethics and social determinants of health.

He is a past President of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and led efforts at SAHM on research ethics since 1991.