Over the past year, the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent (CDA) has been busy advancing our goal to support adolescents by amplifying developmental science.
In 2025, we expanded our team and our efforts, but we also took time to reflect on how we can best use our expertise to broadly impact systems and create effective change. We refreshed our mission statement to describe our core work. We launched a new multi-year initiative to share insights from developmental science relevant to supporting the transition to adulthood. We added new policy-focused resources to STEPS for Youth and created new science-based overviews about adolescence. We shared our expertise through cross-sector trainings, learning experiences, conferences, and presentations. And, we continued to shine a light on the opportunities of this period in development through new podcast episodes, blog posts, and youth-led science communications.
We remain steadfast in our commitment to clearly and accurately sharing the science of adolescence to promote equitable policies, programs, and systems that support all young people.
Refreshing and Refining Our Mission and Strengthening Our Community
To ensure that we are focusing our energy and resources effectively to create broad and lasting impacts for adolescents in the United States, we refreshed our mission statement and considered new ways to track our impact, catalyze the field, and cultivate community across sectors.
Our revised mission statement reflects the work we do in the field and with our community:
“Our mission is to promote the integration of developmental science into policies, practices, and public discourse and advance a shared commitment to creating the conditions that support adolescents.”
Learn more about the CDA on our ‘About Us’ page.
Launching Our Multi-Year Initiative to Support Economic Development
At the 2025 Adolescent Brain Development Symposium, we launched a new initiative aimed at using developmental science to improve the systems and policies that support young people’s economic stability and agency as they transition to adulthood. To kickstart this work, we created a summary of the social and cognitive development that occurs during late adolescence, and offered ways to support the key developmental needs of adolescence to support this transition to adulthood: 16 to 25: Building Pathways toward a Thriving Adulthood.
Over the next few years, CDA will continue to explore how developmental science can inform programs and policies related to workforce development, equitable access to higher education, and community-level economic development, particularly for those young people who are furthest from opportunity.
If you are interested in getting involved with this work, please contact us at cda@psych.ucla.edu.
Strengthening Our Community and Supporting Developmental Science-Informed Policies and Programs
At CDA, most of our work is done by building community with youth-serving leaders, both in-person and virtually, and providing relevant trainings, presentations, and resources to those who work to improve the lives of young people.
Highlights from this work over the past year include meeting in person with policymakers in Washington, D.C., training youth-facing judges and legal professionals in California, presenting to educators and school board leaders in Philadelphia, and providing testimony for senators in Alaska on adolescent brain development with considerations for juvenile justice.
Additionally, we have created resources for policymakers and youth-serving organizations that provide insights into how to use developmental science to inform their policy and programs. Explore our new resources from 2025:
Find more resources on adolescent development designed for policymakers and youth-serving organizations on our STEPS for Youth (Science to Enhance Policy Success) portal.
Amplifying the Opportunities of Adolescence
Adolescence is a remarkable period of opportunity, when rapid brain and social development create a window in which developmentally aligned resources, programs, and systems can set them up for a thriving adulthood.
A large part of CDA’s ongoing work is dedicated to contributing to the public discourse around adolescence and amplifying the message that adolescence is full of immense opportunity. This year, we created resources, fact sheets, and podcasts that explore topics that impact youth and offer recommendations for using developmental science to inform the public’s understanding of adolescence.
Explore featured science-based overviews from 2025:
Listen to our top podcast episodes from 2025:
Visit our website for more CDA resources, blog posts, news, and podcasts.
Stay Updated on Adolescent Development in 2026
We remain committed to ensuring that young people have the research-based support, experiences, and resources they need to thrive in 2026. We have new science-based materials, activities, and events planned for 2026, and we are eager to share them with you. Stay up to date with the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent by signing up for our newsletter or following us on social: X, Bluesky, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
