Lessons learned through a pan-Canadian engagement of policy makers, practitioners and researchers focused on youth health: The Youth Excel CLASP approach

Card, Antony and Manske, Steve and Riley, Barbara and Murnaghan, Donna (2013) Lessons learned through a pan-Canadian engagement of policy makers, practitioners and researchers focused on youth health: The Youth Excel CLASP approach. In: CU Expo 2013, June 12-15, 2013, Corner Brook, NL, Canada. (Submitted)

[English] MS Powerpoint XML Document (pptx) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (3MB)

Abstract

This session will provide participants with the opportunity to reflect and discuss lessons learned from an initiative called Youth Health Collaborative: ‘Excelerating’ evidence-informed action (Youth Excel), that aimed to better understand and build capacities for community monitoring and knowledge exchange to advance youth health goals. The project had seven provincial partners (BC, AB, MB, ON, NB, NL, PE) and two national partners (Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health (JCSH), with the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo undertaking the role of secretariat. Youth Excel’s initial vision is to: as part of routine practice, all federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions in Canada convene leaders in policy, practice, research, evaluation and youth themselves, to jointly set priorities a) for action (i.e., to determine what interventions are most promising) and b) to learn from action (i.e., to determine which individual interventions or mix of interventions will be studied formally). Collective, participatory agenda setting was through provincial and national forums and peer learning was evident across jurisdictions. New models for Knowledge Development and Exchange were developed in three ‘case-study’ provinces and Core Indicators and Measures (CIM) were developed for physical activity, tobacco control and healthy eating. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, 12 interviews were conducted with policy makers, practitioners and researchers and the data were analyzed using a multi-stage thematic approach. Findings indicated that success is predicated on building trust, paying attention to language, strategic leadership, vision and funding. It was also evident that considerable work needs to be done to advance critical issues of youth health.

Actions (login required)

View Item