Australian federal, state and territory policy on the health and wellbeing of young people: A scoping review

Lin Perry,Daniel Waller,Melissa Kang,Katharine Steinbeck,Fiona Brooks

doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.05.017

Abstract

BackgroundThe health and wellbeing of young people are critical for the future of society but the extent to which they are addressed by overarching Australian Federal, State and Territory health policy is difficult to determine. Analysing high-level youth health policy will help establish how Australian governments are articulating and prioritising issues and may guide local and international health agendas. MethodsThis scoping review aimed to determine the extent, range and nature of Australian high-level government policy focused on the general health and wellbeing of the general population of young people. Policies published by Australian Federal, State, or Territory government departments between 2008 and 2019 were thematically analysed employing Braun and Clark's six-step recursive framework. FindingsTwelve policy documents met inclusion criteria. Three meta-themes emerged, comprising policy development, youth health challenges, and policy goals. Policy goals fell into three ubiquitous and overarching categories focused on supporting public health, promoting equity, and improving the health system for young people. ConclusionsA number of youth-specific health policies have been developed by Australian governments in recent years. Whilst goals and strategies are clearly articulated, more can be done to ensure a youth voice in policy development. The policy goals of supporting public health, promoting equity and improving the health system deserve consideration from other countries developing youth health policies.

Highlights

It is critical to ensure the health, wellbeing, safety, security, and productivity of young people (12 to 24 years) within society
A plot of the time periods covered by individual policies (Fig. 2) shows that a number of youth-specific Australian health policies have been developed in recent years [32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43], since the 2013 cut-off utilised by Phillips et al’s review of policies [1]
Whilst policy documents that matched our inclusion criteria were not identified for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) or South Australia (SA), it is important to note that these governments both have policies that focus on either general population health [50,51] or youth more broadly [52,53], and a children’s health services plan is currently in development for the ACT [54]

Summary

Introduction

It is critical to ensure the health, wellbeing, safety, security, and productivity of young people (12 to 24 years) within society. Limited academic review of the Australian health policy landscape relevant to young people has been undertaken with the most current research examining policy up to 2013 [1] Since this time, there have been strong global calls for greater reporting and policy focus on the health and wellbeing of youth and young adults [2,3,4]. There have been strong global calls for greater reporting and policy focus on the health and wellbeing of youth and young adults [2,3,4] It still remains unclear whether current high-level Australian policies attend to the health and wellbeing requirements of young people and represent a comprehensive and nationally consistent approach. Analysing high-level youth health policy will help establish how Australian governments are articulating and prioritising issues and may guide local and international health agendas

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion