Building the Capacity of Adolescents as Researchers: The Co-Creation of the Health Hive Online Course.

backgroundAdolescent engagement is critical to ensuring research meets adolescent health and well-being needs; however, it is not common practice. To maintain research quality, meaningful adolescent engagement requires tailored support and training, yet limited resources exist globally. This study aimed to describe the co-creation process and outputs of developing a freely accessible online course to build adolescent research capacity in public health (14-24 years).

methodsAn iterative participatory co-creation research design with four stages, grounded in Positive Youth Development Theory (strengths-based) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) principles (participatory, inquiry-based and transformative). Adolescents, academics and community partners collaborated at every stage as equal knowledge holders. Stage i: An evidence brief was developed synthesising literature reviews and diverse adolescents' lived experience to inform course development. Stage ii: A co-design workshop was held in March 2025 to design the course structure, style and delivery through interactive group activities, dot-voting and inclusive dialogue. Stage iii: Content was drafted with iterative rounds of feedback with knowledge holders. Stage iv: Course production and user-testing, hosted on Open edX. OUTPUTS: The iterative co-creation process with 37 knowledge holders (43% 14-24 years) led to an online course structured into six core modules: (1) The power of engaging young people in research, (2) What is public research?, (3) Ethics-how to do research the 'right way', (4) Mentally safe participation, (5) How to get involved, and (6) How to apply learnings. Consensus was reached on style and delivery of modules to enhance engagement, content credibility and trust, reflecting adolescent priorities. The course is self-paced (~3 h duration), strengths-based, interactive and accessible (e.g., short videos, quizzes, closed captions, audio-visuals and grade-8 reading level). It launched in October 2025 and is accessible worldwide.

conclusionThe co-created accessible online course aims to support adolescents to be active contributors in public health research. This training has potential to create pathways for inclusive and sustained adolescent engagement in research, translating into evidence-based research and policy. Effectiveness of the training will be assessed through a mixed-methods evaluation. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Adolescents were involved in all co-creation stages from inception to delivery, at various capacities within the Health Hive Steering Committee as paid employees. They were provided mentoring and training to fulfil their role throughout each stage. Their contributions included developing the grant proposal, conceptualising the study name and logo, and informing the workshop evidence brief and agenda. They also played an active role at the co-design workshop, including facilitating and presenting. Further, adolescents informed the course structure, content and delivery of the course and provided iterative feedback during the content creation stage. They also featured in the production of course materials including videos and audio recordings and user-tested the course. They also engaged as co-authors of this manuscript (S.W., E.S., K.C., E.W. and D.M.). A checklist adapted by Nagata et al. 2025 of reporting research with adolescent and youth engagement is available in the supporting material.