Aimed explicitly at contributing to the UN Summit of the Future in 2024, this second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing seeks to ensure that today’s adolescents have the means to address the unique challenges of their generation.

This Commission will begin with an evaluation of progress since the publication of Our future: a Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing in 2016, then move to outlining the emerging threats and unique challenges facing adolescent health and wellbeing today, followed by an outline of the opportunities for multi-sectoral action. The Commissions work is framed through a new understanding of adolescence within political and economic discourses, one which challenges entrenched problem-based narratives around young people.

The state of adolescent health and wellbeing globally: Where are we now and progress since the last Commission

We will provide an up-to-date summary of progress in key adolescent health and wellbeing indicators at global, regional, and national levels. We will identify ‘exemplar’ countries that have made outstanding progress and the key policy and programmatic action associated with such progress.

Work will also look at barriers to investment and action to understand the constraints and opportunities for addressing investment failures in adolescent health and wellbeing at both global and country levels.

Unique challenges, emerging threats and opportunities for adolescent health and wellbeing

Analysis will address emerging threats for this and future generations through the lens of intergenerational justice.  This work will outline some the unique challenges facing this generation of adolescents, but which may manifest in varied ways in different parts of the world.

We will examine major global trends – demographic shifts, migration and displacements, urbanization, media and social media, COVID-19, etc. and how these are intersecting with traditional pathways to adulthood and young people’s navigational capabilities.

We will pay specific attention to the harms and benefits of these megatrends for young people and provide justification for taking and scaling up multisectoral action.

Opportunities for multisectoral action to address adolescent health and wellbeing

We will look at leading contributors to adolescent burden of disease and explore how multi-sectoral action, what key sectors are needed and how they can work together to drive progress in improving outcomes.

Rebalancing systems for adolescent health

Work will address inequalities that emerge during the adolescent and young adult years and continue across the life-course and into the next generation. It will explore the intersectionality of the inequalities and whether the effects of multiple inequalities are additive or intersectional.

This workstream will also explore a natural ecosystem lens to adolescent health and wellbeing and how to leverage youth action and agency towards a sustainable future.