Welcome

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join us in Melbourne for the 7th Australia & New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference in November called “My space, your space, our space: exploring the future of adolescent health together”. This conference will provide an exciting opportunity to explore new knowledge, and to experience different ways of working and thinking about the health and well being of young people.

As professionals we are used to applying close albeit caring scrutiny to the young people we work with. And so we should. But more than ever before, we also need to pay close attention to the changing contexts within which young people engage with each other and the technologies which influence their experience of the world and our knowledge of them. Are social networking sites nurturing a sense of belonging or creating alienation? By what means do young people feel heard and express themselves? What affect does this have on young people’s health and wellbeing?

These same contexts and technologies present similar challenges and opportunities for how we gain new knowledge about young people and their health, and for how we work with young people to improve their health and wellbeing. Neuroimaging advances have changed the way we understand the evolving capacity of the adolescent brain. Technological advances have led the way for new prevention strategies, for example, with new vaccines to promote sexual health. New technologies allow us to embrace increasingly sophisticated methods of assessing young people’s well being.

The health and well being of young people is a shared agenda across different sectors and disciplines. As researchers, policy advisors, health promotion officers, teachers, counsellors or clinicians, our perspectives are naturally informed by the work we do. Coming together to explore different understandings of young people, their health and well being is an exciting and important opportunity for us all.

This year, we are delighted to have the opportunity to hear 3 international keynote speakers who will be joined by an exciting line up of local speakers. We welcome your abstracts that we know will enrich the program. Free of established orthodoxies and paradigms, young people can provide the skills and know-how to help forge new pathways and perspectives. To this end, we have invited young people to become our guides. We seek to integrate youth participation in the conference program in a number of ways, including performances and creative displays, a youth plenary, and the inclusion of young people as presenters.

We look forward to welcoming you to Melbourne for the 7th Australia and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference.

See you in November.

 

Professor Susan Sawyer
Director, Centre for Adolescent Health
Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne

Andrea Krelle
Chairman, Organising Committee
Centre for Adolescent Health