A Centre for Research Excellence in Adolescent Health: Making Health Services Work for Adolescents in a Digital Age

Participation is one of eight standards listed by the World Health Organisation for quality healthcare service for adolescents. Despite these global guidelines and decades of evidence, youth participation in health research is not the standard approach. Moreover, while technology has become increasingly central to how young people search for information on, communicate with and access mental health services, other health services have yet to embrace the full potential of digital communications technology.

Through active creation and promotion of innovative practices, Stream 1 of this CRE (led by Dr Philippa Collin and Professor Angus Dawson, University of Sydney) will develop a new ethics of engagement for adolescent health research in a digital age. In collaboration with the Intergener8 Living Lab, this research brings together diverse young people, families, health consumers, researchers, policy makers and other community members to investigate the conditions, ethics and modalities of youth-engaged health research. Our aim is to directly inform priorities and practices in health research and address the challenges of embedding young people’s experiences in health research, policy and service design in the digital society.

Researchers:

Funding: National Health and Medical Research Council (via University of Sydney)

Period: 2017-2022

Project websites: Intergener8 Living Lab Opens in a new window and Wellbeing Health & Youth Opens in a new window