Managing youth leisure mass gatherings: A coordinated service response for ‘Safer Schoolies’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Mass gatherings are a public health challenge because of crowdedness and associated health risks. ‘Schoolies’ is the largest youth leisure mass gathering in Australia. We examine a coordinated service response called ‘Safer Schoolies’, which aims to manage risks and optimise health and wellbeing for Schoolies attendees and the surrounding community. We examine ‘Safer Schoolies’ in a leisure context from a social identity theory-informed perspective; describe the coordinated service response; demonstrate a practical model of data collection, measurement and baselining; and report trends from a survey-based research programme with five annual cohorts of young people who attended Schoolies (N = 1,588). Findings show attendees have strong levels of trust in, and feel highly identified with, their friends at Schoolies, with low psychological distress on average. Service perceptions and help-seeking intentions improved over time, with cohorts increasingly considering service providers to be safe and viable sources of support. As societies continue to open up following COVID-19 restrictions, these insights can inform targeted surveillance and coordinated management of leisure pursuits in youth mass gathering settings.