Youth Solutions Labs Methods Report

Abstract

When young people are involved in decisions related to their health and well-being, they shape decisions that impact them and can develop solutions that address actual needs better than adult advocates. Unfortunately, frequently young people are left out of these decision-making processes. The Second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and The GovLab at New York University sought to address this need by creating the Youth Solutions Labs. The Youth Solutions Labs is a global research initiative that seeks to co-design solutions to key issues impacting youth health and well-being with young people from across the globe; and understand current sentiments on the re-use of data for or about young people as it relates to those issues. 

This report provides a summary of the Youth Solutions Labs methodology. The methodology follows a three phase approach–first focused on identifying the problems of focus, before co-creating solutions with young people and synthesizing insights for the final report. These phases rely on several participatory approaches including topic mapping, co-design workshops, surveys, and collaborative brainstorming. As a result of this approach, the research team identified several lessons for decision-makers. The latter part of this report outlines lessons, which include methods for communicating with participants, developing research timelines, managing the sample size, and capturing the value of longitudinal discussions. Through this report, we seek to provide a model that researchers and decision makers can use when conducting international and remote youth engagements.

Note:
Gates Foundation Grant Number(s): INV-056091, INV-048897

Data Availability Statement: A summary of participant responses can be found in the Appendix. No raw data can be provided for this project to ensure participant privacy.

© 2025 The Authors. This preprint is posted by SSRN.

Keywords: Youth Solutions Labs: Labs, Lancet Commission Youth and Early Career Commissioners: Youth Commissioners, youth engagement, participatory research, youth health and well-being, methods, health and well-being, co-design