Social and Emotional Wellbeing Research

Social and Emotional Wellbeing Research

The Social and Emotional Wellbeing Research program works in partnership with young people to understand their priorities and needs and the best ways to address these. This includes informing evidence-based policies and co-designing accessible and responsive health services.

The program has established extensive partnerships with young people, policy makers and implementation partners in Australia and globally, ensuring research is translated into action.

One third of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population are adolescents and young people, aged 10-24 years. Despite this, existing policies and services focus mostly on children and adults and, as a result, many young people can’t access the services and supports they need or want. This comes at a time of life when young people are forming their identity, transitioning through education and employment and perhaps starting a family. As a result, unmet health needs for adolescents can impact on their future health as well as the health of the next generation.

An underlying principle of this team’s work is ensuring genuine and meaningful partnership with young people. The National Roadmap project has established a national governance group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to identify the needs and priorities of the nation’s young people to direct an improved way of responding to them. Alongside the governance group, this program will document what is required to enable true youth governance and measure its impacts. These learnings will help inform youth governance in other settings. The group sees the direct involvement of young people as fundamental to its work and any approach to meaningful and sustainable improvement in the health and wellbeing of young people.

Program Leaders

  • Dr Rachel Reilly

    Dr Rachel Reilly

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