Public well being campaigns could be dry and exhausting to know. Covering advanced points and proof, and packaging it for a broad viewers, they have to usually strike a close to unimaginable steadiness of being catchy and informative on the identical time.

As in so many different circumstances, younger individuals paved the way ahead. Many youth organizations use their social media channels to tell their friends about well being subjects, usually creating modern concepts. Using podcasts, social media challenges or brief movies, they make public well being points accessible and sometimes enjoyable, as these examples present:

• In the run as much as World Blood Donor Day 2023, members of the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation throughout Europe challenged their associates to donate blood, publish a selfie of it with a particular social media filter, and tag their associates. By doing so, the scholars demonstrated easy actions one can take to extend consciousness and name for extra life-saving blood donations within the Region.
• The student-led podcast “All things mental health” from the United Kingdom explores numerous points affecting younger individuals’s psychological well being and well-being. Listened to now in 19 international locations, the podcast makes advanced psychological well being subjects accessible. Anna from the workforce explains that the intention is to encourage listeners “to be curious about their mental health and well-being”.
• On International Day of Sign Languages, members of the European Medical Students’ Association (EMSA) launched a social media quiz that includes younger individuals performing pop songs in worldwide signal language. Viewers needed to problem themselves and choose which music they noticed carried out within the brief movies. With this marketing campaign, EMSA college students raised consciousness on accessibility and inclusiveness.

International Youth Day 2023

International Youth Day is marked yearly on 12 August to lift the profile of youth points and rejoice younger individuals’s contributions to societies. This 12 months, WHO/Europe highlights youth-led public well being campaigns, such because the above examples, showcasing artistic, modern methods of speaking to younger individuals for higher well being for all. In doing so, WHO/Europe joins the United Nations Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth of their #YouthLead marketing campaign, which celebrates younger individuals’s resilience, resourcefulness and management in the case of creating a greater world for all.

The largest era of younger individuals in historical past

The world presently has the most important era of younger individuals in historical past:

• There are presently 1.9 billion younger individuals on this planet.
• In the WHO European Region, 1 in 3 individuals is beneath 30.
• In the 4 central Asian international locations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, this share is even bigger with each second individual being beneath 30.

WHO/Europe’s funding in youth engagement

Acknowledging the significance of younger individuals’s management and significant youth engagement, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, kick began Youth4Health as a WHO/Europe particular initiative in 2021. The initiative goals to amplify and embed youth voices and views into all areas of the work WHO/Europe.

Following up on the commitments of the primary Youth4Health discussion board in Tirana, Albania, in 2022, the place over 500 younger individuals from throughout the Region got here collectively, WHO/Europe will launch its new youth community on 25 September 2023 at a side-event to the 73rd session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. Youth activists and youth organizations who’re keen about well being and well-being from throughout Europe and central Asia are inspired to use to turn out to be members of the community. The community launch might be livestreamed on WHO/Europe’s Facebook and X (previously often called Twitter) channels on 25 September, at 10.00–11.30 Central European Summer Time.