Screening for health risks: A second editorial

This editorial discusses nine papers concerned with health risk screening, and two papers reporting original research on risk management for children and adolescents. Five of the screening papers were published in a previous issue of Health, Risk & Society (Vol. 12, No. 1) along with an analytic editorial. This issue (Vol. 12, No. 2) contains an annexe with four additional screening papers plus a second editorial covering all nine papers. The papers illustrate the increasing scope of screening applications 'from the cradle to the grave'. They cover risk screening for Down's syndrome (Gross 2010), child welfare and protection (Munro 2010, Parton 2010), Chlamydia (Balfe 2010), mental health service user violence (Langan 2010), Huntingdon's disease (Leontini 2010), coronary heart disease (Peckham and Hann 2010), cancer (Craddock Lee 2010), and dementia (Milne 2010). The screening papers fall into two strands: one questioning the utility of current systems (Langan 2010, Milne 2010, Munro 2010, Parton 2010, Peckham and Hann 2010); the other presenting original findings concerning the perspectives of eligible candidates (Balfe 2010, Craddock Lee 2010, Gross 2010, Leontini 2010). The two papers concerned with children and adolescents, published in the second part of the present issue, also consider risk perspectives, with particular reference to cultural comparisons. These papers focus on attitudes to and knowledge about sexual health in relation to uncertainty about the future (Davis and Niebes-Davis 2010), and parental views about children's exposure to environmental pollution (Dabrowska and Wismer 2010).