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Policy Codesign

Policy Codesign for

King County Youth Mental Health & Substance Use Prevention

The Issue

Mental health challenges for youth are urgent and widespread.

Up to 1 in 5 young people in the U.S. have a reported mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. Yet, about half of those with treatable mental health disorders do not receive adequate treatment. Adolescent substance use disorders affect over a million youth in the U.S. each year, but only 10% of youth report receiving substance use prevention programming.

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About the Initiative

Better designed policies can help increase access to effective mental health care and programs.

Policy Codesign is a participatory, creative process to help people in communities learn from each other and explore local policy solutions to complex problems. The Policy Codesign process produces a policy recommendation and implementation plan tailored to a particular community’s context. Because the reccommendations and plan are created by community members who have both professional expertise and lived-experience with the issues they are are addressing, Policy Codesign produces results that are both effective and sustainable.

What we hope to achieve

This project aims to produce a policy recommendation and implementation plan for youth mental health promotion and substance use disorder prevention in King County.

How hope to achieve it

Our codesign team (more info below) will go through a five-phased process to learn from each other and explore local policy solutions to these complex problems. We’ll get input from a larger advisory team and share ideas with a community sounding board along the way.