Equipping youth for meaningful policy engagement: an environmental scan

Abstract

To better address the mental health and substance use crises facing youth globally, a comprehensive approach, inclusive of mental health promotion is needed. A key component of mental health promotion is policy intervention to address the social and structural determinants of health. Importantly, youth should be engaged in these efforts to maximize relevancy and impact. Yet, while there is growing interest in the inclusion of youth in the policymaking process, there is a paucity of guidance on how to do this well. This environmental scan reports findings from a comprehensive search of academic and grey literature that was conducted using the electronic databases: CINAHL, ERIC, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and Google. Search terms included variations of ‘youth*’, ‘educat*’, ‘engage*’, ‘policy’ and ‘policy training’. Thirteen English language training programmes met inclusion criteria. Analysis identified marked differences in programme philosophy and focus by geographic region and highlights the need for enhanced evaluation and impact measurement moving forward. This paper makes a needed contribution to the evidence-base guiding this key mental health promotion strategy, which holds the potential to address critical gaps in approaches to youth mental health and substance use.

Assessing the impacts of the Agenda Gap intervention for youth mental health promotion through policy engagement: A study protocol

“…As per realist evaluation methodology, our research process began with a review -in our case, this took the form of an environmental scan to identify existing resources and evidence informing practices to equip youth for meaningful policy engagement [10]. This review, along with theories of youth development, mental health promotion, and liberation psychology identi ed above, have informed our "Initial Intervention Theory" (IIT) (Fig.3).…”

“…Mental health promotion is a strengths-based orientation that focuses on enhancing positive mental health for all people across the spectrum of need [8,9] and is distinct from the prevention and treatment paradigms, which focus on addressing mental health challenge or disorder [10]. Positive mental health includes qualities such as self-esteem, the ability to effectively manage stress, and a sense of wellbeing [11,12].…”

“…In the Canadian context, this has involved the emergence of provincial initiatives for including youth in government consultation to inform decisions about employment and child welfare, amongst others [15][16][17] and the development of Canada's rst national Youth Policy [18,19]. However, while youth engagement has attracted attention across sectors and there is broad consensus that youth engagement in the design of health-related initiatives can yield positive results [20][21][22], there is a paucity of evidence-based strategies to support their meaningful inclusion in policy processes [10]. This is a critical oversight.…”

“…Youth engagement in policy development -particularly those experiencing structural vulnerability and who are often excluded as a result -can deepen our understandings of youths' experiences of mental health [31,32]in their communities and, consequently, contribute to the development of contextually relevant and responsive mental health promotion intervention [20,33]. Given these current priorities and identi ed knowledge gaps, including a paucity of resources to build capacity for youth engaged policymaking [10], our team has developed a prototype intervention -the Agenda Gap -to equip youth for meaningful policy engagement. This protocol describes our team's anticipated contributions to the evidence base guiding youth engagement in policy and documenting our evaluation approach for this complex intervention.…”

Assessing the impacts of the Agenda Gap intervention for youth mental health promotion through policy engagement: A study protocol

“…Yet, while this approach has been identified as a policy priority across a variety of national contexts [1][2][3][4][5][6], its broad enactment has yet to be achieved. Mental health promotion is a strengthsbased orientation that focuses on enhancing positive mental health for all people across the spectrum of need [7,8] and is distinct from the prevention and treatment paradigms, which focus on addressing mental health challenge or disorder [9]. Positive mental health includes qualities such as self-esteem, the ability to effectively manage stress, and a sense of wellbeing [10,11].…”