Abstract for: Integrated approach to identifying and designing interventions to address local adolescent mental health needs

The mental health of children and young people in the United Kingdom has become increasingly worse (Foulkes and Adrews, 2023). Furthermore, strategies to date that have aimed that tackling this challenge have shown little progress. The Kailo programme responds to this issue through a community-based participatory and systems-informed strategy, perceiving mental health and wellbeing as a dynamic state shaped by the interplay of broader health determinants. The place-based programme includes three stages—‘Early Discovery’, ‘Deeper Discovery and Co-Design’, and ‘Implementation’—which are underpinned by an integrated systems, design, and evaluation approach. This presentation delves into the integrated participatory group model building and design occurring in the ‘Deeper Discovery and Co-Design’ stage of the project. The presentation will layout the overarching approach and provide insight into lessons learned and outputs developed within the participatory group model building sessions that took place in the rural Northern Devon and urban Newham, London.