Healthy Places, Healthy Futures (HPHF) Coalition is developing and implementing a transdisciplinary framework for adolescent engagement in chronic disease prevention across the Asia-Pacific, using a planetary health lens.
Adolescents (10–24 years) represent over 1 billion people in the Asia-Pacific yet remain critically underfunded in chronic disease prevention research. At the same time, they face growing risks from changing food systems, climate-related disruptions, and inequitable health environments. Planetary health provides a strategic entry point because it captures the interconnected ecological, social, and commercial determinants shaping adolescent health. This lens enables systems-based approaches to chronic disease prevention that align with the recommendations of the 2nd Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing.
Our vision is to centre adolescents as research partners, acknowledging their unique knowledge and leadership potential and embedding lived experience in research and translation. By integrating intergenerational equity, Indigenous knowledges and participatory methods, the coalition will generate foundational transdisciplinary research across Charles Perkins Centre domains to better understand the interconnected determinants of adolescent health. Through collaboration between adolescents, EMCRs, HDRs, and senior researchers, the initiative will build research capacity and establish a scalable adolescent-centred systems research framework. This platform will support future transdisciplinary collaborations, policy engagement, and competitive funding to advance chronic disease prevention.
This project will evaluate how engaging adolescents in watershed restoration influences both adolescent health and wellbeing and the ecological health of watersheds in Australia and Fiji. The PhD will combine systematic reviews with mixed-methods public health research, including quantitative analyses and qualitative participatory approaches, to examine how adolescent engagement in environmental stewardship shapes health behaviours, community wellbeing, and local ecosystem outcomes.
The Health Hive is a national initiative designed to support meaningful adolescent engagement in health and wellbeing research by providing training, resources, and opportunities for young people to contribute across the research process, from shaping research priorities to collaborating on and leading projects. Funded by the Medical Research Future Fund Consumer-Led Grant, it has been developed in partnership with adolescents, researchers, Health Consumers NSW, Sydney Health Partners, and the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance. Learn more about Health Hive
Funded by the Australian Government, Bloomberg Philanthropies and implemented across the Pacific by universities, ministries of health, agriculture, environment and conservation NGOs, WISH is a collaborative effort grounded in Pacific communities for how to improve both chronic and infectious disease outcomes not just through health services, but through restoring the environmental foundations of wellbeing within Pacific Island watersheds. Learn more about WISH Pacific (Watershed Interventions for Systems Health)
This project unpacks how trends like #FishTok are translated offline and connectyoung people back to nature. It offers a window into how digital trends can lead to young people engaging with waterways, food systems, and sustainability within rapidly shifting digital and environmental landscapes that are shaped by forces such as social media regulation and climate change.
The Healthy Places, Healthy Futures Coalition brings together the partner networks of our foundational initiatives, Health Hive and WISH, alongside new collaborators including the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The coalition will work closely with Indigenous organisations, community groups, youth partners, and policymakers to ensure research is informed by lived experience and community priorities.
As the coalition develops, we aim to expand this network and actively welcome new collaborations with government, industry, philanthropic, and community partners committed to advancing adolescent health and chronic disease prevention.
