Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Education And Debate

Young people's health: the need for action

BMJ 2005; 330 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7496.901 (Published 14 April 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;330:901

Rapid Response:

Young People's Health - attempts to respond

"Few youth specific services exist" say Viner and Barker in their excellent article on Young People's Health. They are right - but attempts are being made to address the risky health behaviours of 13-15 year olds through a Dept. of Health funded programme - the Young People's Development Programme - which puts targeted youth in touch with youth workers for an average of 6-10 hours per week for a full year.

Programmes are multi-component, mixing health education around drug misuse, sexual health and diet - with arts, sports, lifeskills and volunteering.

The 3 year pilot programme is being rigorously evaluated and the work - based on promising U.S.schemes - is taking place in a variety of locations (coastal, urban,rural) with a range of groups (school excludees, asylum seekers, offenders etc) and has just ended its first year. The National Youth Agency is also hoping that, with support from the DH through programmes like YPDP, a much bigger network of health promoting youth projects can be created to ensure that medical expertise can be added to from those professions with experience in working productively with groups that many services find hard to contact or make progress with.

For a more extensive overview, please go to the National Youth Agency website - www.nya.org.uk - and access the YPDP link, or e-mail myself on richardm@nya.org.uk. Alternatively, the key contacts at the Dept. of Health are Karen Turner (karen.turner@dh.gsi.gov.uk) or Catherine Dennison (catherine.dennison@dh.gsi.gov.uk.

Competing interests: I am employed by the National Youth Agency as a Project Coordinator for the Young People's Development Programme, the subject of my response

Competing interests: No competing interests

22 April 2005
Richard Mckie
Project Coordinator
National Youth Agency, Humberstone Rd. Leicester