Establishing Stakeholder Priorities for the Development and Implementation of Strategies to Support Continued Youth & Family Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic

In March 2020 the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 disease a global pandemic. Governments in Canada took broad sweeping measures that failed to fully safeguard Canadians. Particularly distressing effects have been documented for Canadian youth and their families. For the past two years our research team has been engaging with youth and families in Canada to build a stakeholder-informed national program of Pandemic Preparedness research, to understand and mitigate the complex impacts of the pandemic on day-to-day life and wellbeing for youth and families living in Canada. However, through the conduction of this work, we have identified critical areas requiring additional study to ensure vital knowledge gaps do not persist in our understanding and management of pandemic impacts for Canadian families. These areas include: 1) ongoing negative impacts of the pandemic on day-to-day life and wellbeing for youth and families and 2) evolving mitigating strategies and solutions for youth and family wellbeing. Our proposed work involves two overlapping and interconnected projects that expand our existing work. First, we will synthesize evidence-informed strategies to mitigate negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth and family wellbeing, harnessed from our already funded knowledge synthesis projects, in a consensus process with youth and families, clinicians, knowledge users, and decision makers. Second, we are requesting funds to conduct a national stakeholder meeting to generate and communicate evidence-informed consensus statements on youth and family pandemic recovery informed by youth and family experiences. Our ultimate aim is to partner with diverse youth and families in Canada to understand the evolution of their experiences and needs throughout COVID-19 recovery to co-create solutions that develop and mobilize health research that contributes meaningfully to timely, equitable, and effective responses and recovery.