This issue of the Health Risk Communicator is dedicated to risk communication research. The articles include current and ongoing research topics that provide useful results and information for improving risk communications and building hypotheses. Affecting 5 million children each year, it is the most prevalent chronic childhood disease. To help reduce the morbidity and mortality from asthma, surveillance must be established to determine trend bases and monitor intervention consequences. A broader-scale program is needed to implement and evaluate effective interventions that will help control unintentional injuries among children.
Cancer is another leading cause of childhood mortality.
With an increase in the incidence of adult non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and testicular cancer, studies are focusing on the extent to which these diseases may be related to environmental exposures in utero or during childhood. Although environmental factors have been associated with some developmental disorders, much work is necessary to determine the extent to which environmental factors affect the full range of developmental disorders in children. Next Steps Two Task Force subcommittees, the Research and Data Needs and the Program Implementation Subcommittees, are in place. The Research and Data Needs Subcommittee is developing an inventory of Federal Government research completed and underway, thus identifying data gaps that need to be filled. The results of both subcommittees' efforts, when completed, will be available on the Internet.