You4Health! An e-learning platform to promote the capacity of youth organisations to develop health promotion interventions

Background Alcohol and drugs represent a major threat to young people’s health and wellbeing. Results of our need analysis indicated that youth organisations would like to contribute to alcohol and drug prevention, but most of them lack the tools to implement effective iniatives. There are also barriers to their involvement due a largely dominant problem-focused top-down perspective in public health that tend to consider individuals – and young people in particular –as essentially passive and in need of protection or stigmatised for their (un)healthy behaviours We concluded that youth organisations needed support and guidance to choose the right interventions that are feasible and effective, and empower them to be actively involved in Public Health. For these reasons, we applied for this project. It is important to mobilise all resources in our society, including members of youth organisations and young people in general. Youth organisations are in the right position of promoting young people’s health (e.g., they are very good at engaging peers). Objectives This project’s key long-term goal was to empower members of youth organisations to contribute to reducing excessive alcohol and drug use, and their consequences on young people's well-being, physical and mental health. We aimed to a) raise awareness among young people and volunteers on the importance of incorporating health-related initiatives in various aspects and fields of youth; b) give them the necessary skills and competencies to develop and implement effective youth-led health projects. This contributes to increased quality within youth organisations and ultimately foster youth active involvement in civic and social life. By actively involving young people/youth workers (bottom-up approach) You4Health! aimed to provide them with youth-oriented training (consisting in the two project’s intellectual outputs) to realise health promotion interventions in their local communities. Such training also includes examples of alcohol/drug effective interventions that are applicable to real life situations of youth organisations. Implementation In connection with the outputs described in the following section, the You4Health! team implemented the following activities: - Project management: 3 Transnational Project Meetings, 7 online steering committee meetings, and several other bilateral online meetings -Implementation of quality controls in collaboration with associate partners -The project official website (https://you4health.eu/), logo and visual identity were designed and released -Establishment of expert and grassroot youth advisory group -Development and release of the project’s two intellectual outputs in collaboration with Youth Advisory group members -Realisation of a 4-day Residential Training in Brussels with 16 members of youth organisations -Realisation of the 4 Multiplier Events in Italy, Belgium, Slovenia and Spain. -Development and implementation of the project dissemination plan (Newsletter/e-mails to network, Socials, project presentations at relevant events). - Dissemination to the scientific community of researchers in health promotion and youth engagement Achievements You4Health! Produced two IOs IO1: a 50+ page report that presents the project’s approach (i.e., youth involvement in prevention) and describes our mapping (scientific and grey literature) of the field of youth-led alcohol/drug health promotion interventions. IO2: a multilanguage online training platform where young people can find guidance and tools to implement effective health promotion initiatives. It consists of 3 main sections and 29 thematic modules: 1) Health (15 modules); 2) Project management (7 modules); and 3) Skills and competences (7 modules). It is available in English and in 5 other languages: Italian, Spanish, French, German and Slovenian. The establishment of the project’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG) was an important achievement. Both Intellectual Outputs were the result of a co-production process that involved YAG members. 16 YAG members, representing 11 different youth organisations and 10 countries, participated in a four-day residential training in Brussels. A total of four multipliers events were realised with 159 participants from more than 80 different youth organizations.