Details

Purpose
This session will present and reflect on the experiences of the CO-CREATE project with regards to youth engagement and co-creation in obesity prevention policy.

Rationale:
As the largest demographic group, young people are increasingly signalling their desire to be involved in addressing today’s leading global health challenges. At the same time childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges today. Co-creating obesity and health polices with young people, and including them in policy processes in a meaningful way is vital and more attention is needed to how to do this effectively.

Objectives:

1. To raise awareness about the importance of, and opportunities to, engage youth in policy and research.

2. To share the experiences of the COCREATE project in co-creating research and policy with young people and how these can be applied to other public health issues.

Summary:

Since 2018, the Horizon 2020 research project COCREATE has worked with adolescents to create, inform and share policy ideas to address obesity and foster healthier food and physical activity environments. This session will present the key findings, learnings and implications related to co-creation with youth, followed by a moderated discussion with project partners and youth activists about the learnings and implications a wide range of public health policy issues. Participants will leave with more awareness about the importance of engaging youth people in policy discussions and development and have ideas about how they can include young people in their own work in a meaningful way.

Format:

Chair's Welcome (5 mins)

3 presentations (30mins)

1. Youth engagement and co-creation: Ambitions and learnings – Prof. Knut Inge Klepp, NIPH, Norway

2. Associations between social media, adolescent mental health and diet: a systematic review – Mc. Kaitlin Conway-Moore, London, UK

3. Policy co-creation with youth through a novel dialogue tool – Claire Bouillon, EAT, Norway

Panel discussion: Advancing youth engagement across public health (40mins)

A panel including youth representatives from the CO-CREATE project and other civil society groups will be convened to discuss and react to the experiences of the COCREATE project, learnings for others working across public health issue and to explore the question of how we can better facilitate youth engagement and co-creation in policy.

Interaction:
Audience members will be encouraged to ask questions as part of the panel discussion, and will also be invited to interact using digital tools such slido which will be accessible in person and online.

Speaker