Public engagement to refine a whole-school intervention to promote adolescent mental health.

Background: Despite high rates of adolescent mental health problems, there are few effective school-based interventions to address this. Whole-school interventions offer a feasible and sustainable means of promoting mental health, but few have to date been evaluated. Previously we trialled the Learning Together intervention comprising local needs assessment, student and staff participation in decision-making, restorative practice, and a social and emotional skills curriculum.

Qualitative study of the feasibility and acceptability of implementation, and potential mechanisms of Learning Together for Mental Health, a whole-school intervention aiming to promote mental health and wellbeing in secondary schools.

Background: Despite high rates of adolescent mental-health problems, there are few effective whole-school interventions to address this. Whole-school interventions offer a feasible and sustainable means of promoting mental health. We previously evaluated the Learning Together (LT) intervention which was effective in preventing bullying (primary outcome), promoting mental well-being, psychological functioning, and reducing substance use (secondary outcomes).

Exploring how to widen the acceptability of public health interventions: a systematic review protocol.

Introduction: Health interventions that require significant change to individual lifestyles or social norms can pose a challenge for widespread public acceptability and uptake. At the same time, over the last two decades, there has been increasing attention paid to the rise of populist movements globally, defined by 'the people' pushing against 'an elite' viewed as depriving the people of their sovereignty. To understand potential overlap in these two areas, this study aims to synthesise existing international evidence on linkages between populist attitudes and reduced uptake, acceptability, adherence and/or effectiveness of public health interventions.

Association of volatile substance, nitrous oxide and alkyl nitrate use with mental health in UK adolescents.

Background: 'Inhalants' have been associated with poorer mental health in adolescence, but little is known of associations with specific types of inhalants.

Aims: We aimed to investigate associations of using volatile substances, nitrous oxide and alkyl nitrates with mental health problems in adolescence.

Method: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis using data from 13- to 14-year-old adolescents across England and Wales collected between September 2019 and March 2020.

Parental domestic violence and abuse, mental ill-health, and substance misuse and the impact on child mental health: a secondary data analysis using the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

Background: Parental domestic violence and abuse (DVA), mental ill-health (MH), and substance misuse (SU) can have a negative impact on both parents and children. However, it remains unclear if and how parental DVA, MH, and SU cluster and the impacts this clustering might have. We examined how parental DVA, MH, and SU cluster during early childhood, the demographic/contextual profiles of these clusters, and how these clusters relate to child MH trajectories.

Association between cannabis potency and mental health in adolescence.

Introduction: In legal and illegal markets, high-potency cannabis (>10 % delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)) is increasingly available. In adult samples higher-potency cannabis has been associated with mental health disorder but no studies have considered associations in adolescence.

Methods: A population-wide study compared no, low and high potency cannabis using adolescents (aged 13-14 years) self-reported symptoms of probable depression, anxiety, and auditory hallucinations.

Violence outcomes in later adolescence with the Good School Toolkit-Primary: a nonrandomized controlled trial in Uganda.

Background: We sought to determine whether the Good School Toolkit-Primary violence prevention intervention was associated with reduced victimisation and perpetration of peer and intimate partner violence four years later, and if any associations were moderated by sex and early adolescent: family connectedness, socio-economic status, and experience of violence outside of school.

Methods: Drawing on schools involved in a randomised controlled trial of the intervention, we used a quasi-experimental design to compare violence outcomes between those who received the intervention during our trial (n = 1388), and those who did not receive the intervention during or after the trial (n = 522). Data were collected in 2014 (mean age 13.

Hard to reach? Methodological challenges researching vulnerable, gang-involved, young people.

Introduction: Research with young people (YP) is ethically challenging and bound in a complex maze of issues relating to power, voice and representation. Such sensitivities mean that the challenges raised in researching marginalised YP are often hard to navigate. This paper reports on research carried out with YP to explore links between mental health, school exclusion and involvement in criminal gangs.

Conceptualizing Sexual Wellbeing: A Qualitative Investigation to Inform Development of a Measure (Natsal-SW).

Despite increasing scientific and policy interest in sexual wellbeing, it remains poorly conceptualized. Many studies purporting to measure it instead measure related but distinct concepts, such as sexual satisfaction. This lack of conceptual clarity impedes understanding, measuring, and improving sexual wellbeing.

School-based interventions TO Prevent Dating and Relationship Violence and Gender-Based Violence: STOP-DRV-GBV systematic review.

Background: Schools have a duty of care to prevent violence between students but a significant amount of dating and relationship violence and gender-based violence occurs in schools. These are important public health issues with important longitudinal consequences for young people.

Objectives: To understand functioning and effectiveness of school-based interventions for the prevention of dating and relationship violence and gender-based violence.

Whole-school interventions promoting student commitment to school to prevent substance use and violence, and improve educational attainment: a systematic review.

Background: Whole-school interventions modify the school environment to promote health. A subset of these interventions promotes student commitment to school to prevent substance (tobacco, alcohol, other drugs) use and/or violence. A previous review identified the theory of human functioning and school organisation as a comprehensive theory of such interventions, and found evidence that these interventions reduce substance use and/or violence.

Good School Toolkit-Secondary Schools to prevent violence against students: protocol for a pilot cluster randomised controlled trial.

Introduction: No whole-school interventions which seek to reduce physical, sexual and emotional violence from peers, intimate partners and teachers have been trialled with adolescents. Here, we report a protocol for a pilot trial of the Good School Toolkit-Secondary Schools intervention, to be tested in Ugandan secondary schools. Our main objectives are to (1) refine the intervention, (2) to understand feasibility of delivery of the intervention and (3) to explore design parameters for a subsequent phase III trial.

Assessing Survey Items on Social Norms Relating to Dating and Relationship Violence and to Gender: Cognitive Interviews with Young People in England.

Widespread among adolescents in England, dating and relationship violence (DRV) is associated with subsequent injuries and serious mental health problems. While DRV prevention interventions often aim to shift harmful social norms, no established measures exist to assess relevant norms and their role in mediating DRV outcomes. We conducted cognitive interviews exploring the understandability and answerability of candidate measures of social norms relating to DRV and gender roles, informing measure refinement.

School-based relationship and sexuality education intervention engaging adolescent boys for the reductions of teenage pregnancy: the JACK cluster RCT.

Background: The need to engage boys in gender-transformative relationships and sexuality education (RSE) to reduce adolescent pregnancy is endorsed by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Objectives: To evaluate the effects of on the avoidance of unprotected sex and other sexual health outcomes.

Design: A cluster randomised trial, incorporating health economics and process evaluations.

Association of cannabis, cannabidiol and synthetic cannabinoid use with mental health in UK adolescents.

Background: Cannabis has been associated with poorer mental health, but little is known of the effect of synthetic cannabinoids or cannabidiol (often referred to as CBD).

Aims: To investigate associations of cannabis, synthetic cannabinoids and cannabidiol with mental health in adolescence.

Method: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis with 13- to 14-year-old adolescents across England and Wales in 2019-2020.

Whole-school interventions promoting student commitment to school to prevent substance use and violence: a systematic review.

Objectives: Whole-school interventions that promote student commitment to school are a promising modality to reduce health inequalities through school-level change; however, evidence for the effectiveness of these interventions in improving policy-relevant health outcomes, such as substance use and violence, has not been comprehensively synthesised.

Study Design: This was a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Methods: We searched 20 databases and a range of other sources to identify randomised trials meeting our intervention definition and reporting substance use and violence outcomes.

Are school-based interventions to prevent dating and relationship violence and gender-based violence equally effective for all students? Systematic review and equity analysis of moderation analyses in randomised trials.

School-based interventions for the prevention of dating and relationship violence (DRV) and gender-based violence (GBV) take advantage of universal opportunities for intervention. Information on differential effectiveness of interventions is important to assess if they ameliorate or worsen social gradients in specific outcomes. This is especially important in DRV and GBV prevention given the gendered context of these behaviours and their common aetiologies in patriarchal gender norms, and social acceptance in school contexts of sexual harassment, such as catcalling or unwanted groping.

Approaches to consent in public health research in secondary schools.

Objectives: We assess different approaches to seeking consent in research in secondary schools.

Design: We review evidence on seeking active versus passive parent/carer consent on participant response rates and profiles. We explore the legal and regulatory requirements governing student and parent/carer consent in the UK.

Re-orientating systematic reviews to rigorously examine what works, for whom and how: Example of a realist systematic review of school-based prevention of dating and gender violence.

Conventional systematic reviews offer few insights into for whom and how interventions work. 'Realist reviews' examine such questions via examining 'context-mechanism-outcome configurations' (CMOCs) but are insufficiently rigorous in how evidence is identified, assessed and synthesised. We developed 'realist systematic reviews', addressing similar questions to realist reviews but using rigorous methods.

Exploring views of members of the public and policymakers on the acceptability of population level dietary and active-travel policies: a qualitative study.

Background: There is limited evidence on what shapes the acceptability of population level dietary and active-travel policies in England. This information would be useful in the decision-making process about which policies should be implemented and how to increase their effectiveness and sustainability. To fill this gap, we explored public and policymakers' views about factors that influence public acceptability of dietary and active-travel policies and how to increase public acceptability for these policies.

School-based interventions for preventing dating and relationship violence and gender-based violence: A systematic review and synthesis of theories of change.

School-based interventions for preventing dating and relationship violence (DRV) and gender-based violence (GBV) are an important way of attempting to prevent and reduce the significant amount of DRV and GBV that occurs in schools. A theoretical understanding of how these interventions are likely to cause change is essential for developing and evaluating effectiveness, so developing an overarching theory of change for school-based interventions to prevent DRV and GBV was the first step in our systematic review. Theoretical data were synthesised from 68 outcome evaluations using methods common to qualitative synthesis.