Although adolescence is characterized by general good health, this developmental stage is a key time for promoting a healthy lifestyle and preventing health-compromising behaviors and injuries. This paper presents a selective review of research into factors predicting health and safety behavior patterns and injury occurrence, focusing on individual factors as well as factors at the family, peer, community, societal, and policy levels. Emphasized are studies that incorporate rigorous experimental evaluations of interventions, longitudinal studies identifying predictors of health and safety outcomes using multivariate analyses, and studies that have been replicated with similar results across different populations and geographic regions, with limited consideration of case-control investigations. The paper restricts discussion to studies measuring outcomes during adolescence. The health promotion behaviors considered are tobacco use, physical activity and nutrition, sleep, and dental health. The paper notes that more is known about why healthy behaviors are important than about what predicts these behaviors or what can be done to promote them. It is also noted that adolescents in lower income families bear a disproportionate share of unhealthy behaviors. The paper examines injury prevention, considering unintentional injuries as a group, motor vehicle injuries, bicycle injuries, and occupational injuries. Injury prevention programs described include driver education and programs to prevent drinking and driving and to promote seat belt use. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for more high quality research to guide and inform health behavior promotion and injury prevention during adolescence. A table summarizes the research literature and implications for targeted activities to promote a healthy and safe lifestyle and to prevent injury among adolescents. (Contains 229 references.) (KB)