Synopsis: Schools are an important and often underutilised setting for promoting adolescent health and wellbeing. This 2-part series will explore whole-school approaches to health promotion, using the first Global Standards for Health Promoting Schools (developed by our team for the WHO and UNESCO) and showcase recent research on the effectiveness and implementation of health-promoting schools with a focus on youth engagement and mental health in the Asia Pacific region.
Part 1 of this series introduced the Global Standards, highlighting the evidence and policy that informed their development, shared insights from implementation of the Global Standards in early adopter countries and highlighted emerging learnings from ongoing research into adolescent involvement in operationalising the global standards in school settings in Australia.
Questions this seminar addressed:
- What is a Health-Promoting School?
- How are young people essential to creating a healthy school community?
- How can we engage young people in research to create Health-Promoting Schools?
- What is the current evidence to support a whole-school approach to mental health?
- What is the current status of whole-school approaches to mental health in Indonesia and where are the opportunities for growth?
Speakers: Professor Susan Sawyer, Dr Jennifer Dam, Dr Roshini Balasooriya
Professor Susan Sawyer AM is based at the University of Melbourne, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital. Susan holds the chair of adolescent health at The University of Melbourne, is the director of the Centre for Adolescent Health, a WHO collaborating centre for adolescent health, and the immediate past president of the International Association for Adolescent Health. She is a globally recognised leader in adolescent health with 30 years of experience in adolescent health research, policy, capacity building and clinical care, including a long history of collaborations and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Jennifer Damis an experienced research coordinator with a PhD in knowledge translation. She is a lecturer in Adolescent Health and Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne and works in the Centre for Adolescent Health supporting the Centre’s work in Health-Promoting Schools and contributes to the Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) developing education initiatives to help drive research impact in Global Adolescent Health.
Dr Roshini Balasooriya is a Psychiatry Trainee with Alfred Health and a Final Year PhD Candidate with the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. Sponsored by the Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship, her PhD explores how we can leverage secondary school systems to better promote wellbeing among Australian adolescents.
Time: 1:00 pm – 2:00pm AEST
Date: 12th of June 2025
Event recording
Advancing Adolescent Health in the Asia Pacific: A virtual community to share knowledge and support collaboration
Despite one in two of the world’s adolescents living in the Asia-Pacific region, adolescent health is a relatively new field of endeavour in Australia as well as the region. It is a field that spans policy makers from multiple sectors, researchers from different disciplines, and practitioners working in health services, schools and communities and encompasses a multitude of health topics and concerns. Despite this, there are few opportunities to come together to share, showcase and build capacity to improve adolescent health and wellbeing in the region.
This seminar series aims to provide opportunities for researchers, policy makers, practitioners, implementers, young advocates – indeed, anyone interested in the health and wellbeing of adolescents – to enhance their understanding of adolescent health and wellbeing, with a focus on research.
This series is supported by the Centre of Research Excellence for Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health. Led by a team at the Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, it brings together leading Australian research groups including the University of Melbourne, Burnet Institute, University of New South Wales, University of Queensland, University of South Australia, and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
Read more about the series here
