Peer-reviewed article
What young people want to improve their health and well-being: insights from over 1.5 million young people.
Ashrita Saran, David A Ross, Renée De Jong, Howard White, David Gomez et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This large survey of over 1.5 million young people aged 10-24 from 89 countries asked what they want to improve their health and well-being. Responses were analysed and grouped into five key domains: learning and education (36.3% of responses), safety and supportive environments (28.4%), and health and nutrition (20.9%). Young people consistently prioritized all five well-being domains across different regions, with the strongest emphasis on education, safety, and health. The findings highlight that adolescent well-being is complex and requires coordinated action across multiple sectors.
Key points
- Learning and education was the most frequently mentioned domain (36.3% of wants), followed by safety (28.4%) and health (20.9%)
- Young people identified 27 sub-domains of well-being across five main domains: Health, Connection, Safety, Learning, and Agency
- Over 99.9% of responses from 1.51 million young people were successfully classified and analysed
- 92.5% of respondents were from low- or middle-income countries, with strong representation from Africa (48.9%), South-East Asia (33.3%), and Eastern Mediterranean regions (10.3%)
- Approximately 90.4% of respondents were aged 15-24 years and 50.5% self-identified as female
Limitations
The survey significantly under-represents high-income countries, European, and Western Pacific regions, limiting the generalizability of findings to wealthy nations and these geographic areas. The survey captures what young people want but does not measure actual barriers to achieving these wants or evaluate any specific interventions to improve well-being.
Abstract
Knowing young people's views on what they want is essential to effective policies and programmes to promote their health and well-being. The What Young People Want hybrid online/in-person survey invited young people (10-24 years) to complete the statement: 'To improve my well-being, I want…' Responses from the 1 510 004 respondents were analysed by content and thematic analysis using natural language processing techniques, followed by word frequency analysis to identify and quantify keywords and phrases. The respondents' 'wants' were classified into five domains [good health and optimum nutrition ('Health'); connectedness, positive values and contribution to society ('Connection'); safety and a supportive environment ('Safety'); learning, competence, education, skills and employability ('Learning'); and agency and resilience ('Agency')] and 27 sub-domains of adolescent well-being, or as general statements of well-being. About 1 509 904 responses (>99.9%) were classified. Since each response could contain multiple 'wants', 1 714 027 individual 'wants' were identified at the domain level and 2 072 657 at the sub-domain level. Respondents were from 89 countries, with >99.9% from low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) and 1 397 735 (92.5%) from three WHO Regions (Africa (AFR); 48.9%), South-East Asia (SEAR); 33.3%; and Eastern Mediterranean (EMR); 10.3%, 112 125 (7.4%) from the Americas (AMR) but only 138 (<0.1%) and N = 6 (<0.1%) from the European (EUR) and Western Pacific Regions (WPR), respectively. About 90.4% were youth (15-24 years), and 50.5% self-identified as female. The greatest number of 'wants' related to the 'Learning' domain (36.3%), followed by the 'Safety' (28.4%) and 'Health' (20.9%) domains. Despite under-representation of high-income countries, AMR, and especially EUR and WPR, the results showed that young people gave importance to all five domains of well-being, especially 'Learning'; 'Safety'; and 'Health', across all four WHO Regions with adequate representation. The results emphasize that adolescent well-being is multi-faceted and that multi-sectoral policies and programmes will be essential to the successful promotion of adolescents' health and well-being.