YOUTH-reach

YOUTHreach is a European research project tackling the expanding youth mental health crisis by bridging critical gaps in mental health support across Europe. With 50% of European youth facing unmet mental health needs and only around 30% receiving appropriate care, the project addresses an urgent public health challenge with long-term consequences for the health, wellbeing and economic productivity of an entire generation. YOUTHreach evaluates the cost-effectiveness of three existing and accessible interventions for the prevention and early treatment of mental ill-health in young people: walk-in youth mental health support, a guided self-help mHealth intervention, and clinical and peer-moderated digital treatment platforms. Together, these represent a comprehensive and comparative approach to understanding what works, for whom, and where across diverse European contexts.

Building directly on the digital infrastructure and methodological foundations established within Youth-GEMs, YOUTHreach develops its work through sustained co-creation with young people and their support networks throughout the entire duration of the project. Best practice recommendations are being developed and integrated into a broader European youth mental health framework, supported by a privacy-protected, FAIR research data infrastructure and an Open Science approach. The project also tests the feasibility and acceptability of interventions at new sites across Europe, with the ambition of transforming the traditional mental healthcare system into one that is really responsive to the needs of young people.

Ab.Acus plays a central technical and strategic role in the project. Building on the platform developed within Youth-GEMs, Ab.Acus has adapted its smartphone-based passive and active monitoring system for the specific requirements of YOUTHreach, capturing lifestyle and behavioural data along its users’ daily lives. alongside. Ab.Acus has also developed a dashboard for healthcare professionals and clinical researchers and has contributed to the implementation of a secure, user-friendly and validated eCRF database. Ab.Acus will provide sustained access, technical support and continuous updates to the monitoring application across the selected clinical sites for the full duration of the project’s clinical study, ensuring reliable data collection throughout the comparative effectiveness evaluation. Beyond the technical infrastructure, Ab.Acus leads IP management and exploitation planning for the consortium, coordinating the identification and development of Key Exploitable Results and overseeing IP arrangements, go-to-market strategies and interactions with external partners interested in the different project outputs.

YOUTHreach represents a relevant step towards a more effective, accessible and equitable mental healthcare system for young people in Europe. By combining rigorous comparative effectiveness research with co-created digital monitoring tools and a robust exploitation strategy, the project is designed not only to generate evidence but to ensure that evidence translates into lasting change — offering perspective, health and productivity to the next generation of European citizens.