Six years after the launch of the original report, Our future: a Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing the health and wellbeing of adolescents is poised at a tipping point. Adolescent health and wellbeing indicators have stagnated while new threats have emerged requiring collective and urgent action.

This second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing brings together a diverse group of 43 Commissioners from across disciplines, sectors, and geographies. Given demographic shifts and the likelihood that half of the world’s young people will be growing up in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century, we have emphasised the participation of Commissioners living and/or working in Africa. We have also adopted an innovative intergenerational partnership approach to Commission membership with workstreams co-led by senior academics, emerging and early-career research leaders, and youth advocates.

Moving beyond the simple inclusion of young people, the Commission is committed to meaningful and continuous youth engagement and working towards the establishment of complementary and equal partnerships. It also recognizes the importance of engaging young people as empowered actors and leaders in finding solutions to challenges facing their generation.

Professors Alex Ezeh, Russell Viner, and Sarah Baird are co-chairs of the new Commission, supported by Steering Committee members: Professor George Patton, Associate Professor Peter Azzopardi, Professor Susan Sawyer, and Dr Shakira Choonara

Meet the Commissioners

This second Commission will:

• Focus on the barriers to investment
• Highlight the importance of an intergenerational perspective
• Propose innovative and scalable multi-sectoral actions for adolescent health and wellbeing
• Extend earlier analyses of the social, cultural and ecologic determinants of adolescent development
• Propose a new framing of adolescence within political and economic discourses, one which challenges entrenched problem-based narratives around young people
• Advocate for better balancing the demands of a burgeoning population of older adults with the needs of younger people

Aimed explicitly at contributing to the UN Common Agenda on youth convening in 2023, this second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing seeks to ensure that today’s adolescents have the means to address the unique challenges of their generation.

Read more about the workplan

Read the Lancet Commentary, Realising transformative change in adolescent health and wellbeing: a second Lancet Commission, published August 20.