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SUMMARY
A large gap exists between research and practice in the development and implementation of validated school health prevention programs. This gap might be narrowed by developments in the emerging field of prevention science, which is making progress in evaluating health promotion and behavioral risk prevention programs. In this paper we review four areas from the prevention science field. They include: (1) promoting healthy behavior and preventing chronic health problems, (2) preventing substance abuse, (3) preventing high-risk sexual behaviors, and (4) preventing child physical and sexual abuse. Promising practices are described for each of these topics. Recommendations are made regarding strategies for implementing empirically validated programs, supplementing school programs with multi-level, ecological prevention strategies, and assessing schools' readiness to implement prevention programs.