OPS Hosts Workshops for Australia Awards Fellowship, Seminar on Second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Well-being
The USC Office of Population Studies Foundation, Inc (OPS) hosted the second round of onsite sessions for the Australia Awards Fellowship “Driving Responsive Actions for Adolescent Health in the Philippines Utilizing Local Data” from June 24-25, 2025 in the University of San Carlos-Talamban Campus. The Australia Awards is a prestigious development cooperation window funded by the Australian Government. Among the fellows are faculty members from the University of San Carlos Department of Anthropology, Sociology and History, Economics, and research associates/fellows from OPS. The rest of the Philippine fellows under the grant come from the University of the Philippines Population Institute, the University of the Philippines-Cebu and the Research Institute for Mindanao Culture at Xavier University. This grant aims to produce publishable papers in international journals in adolescent health and wellbeing using data from Longitudinal Cohort Study on the Filipino Child, a nationally representative study tracking children during the implementation period of the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2030). The grant fellows are under the mentorship of resource persons from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), Melbourne, Australia. Among them is Dr. Peter Azzopardi, who visited the fellows for a series of workshops to move paper writing forward. Dr. Marie Habito, an experienced qualitative researcher from the Burnet Institute and MCRI, joined Dr. Azzopardi as a resource person. The first round of workshops were held in MCRI in Melbourne. The fellows will be visiting MCRI again near the end of the year for the next series of workshops.
Dr. Azzopardi and Dr. Habito were also speakers in a public seminar “Driving Action In Adolescent Health: Key Recommendations From The Second Lancet Commission” in the Kabilin Center on June 25, 2025. This seminar was organized by OPS and the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI). Dr. Azzopardi presented the key findings from the Second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. The Second Commission (published May 31, 2025) builds on the 2016 First Commission which called attention to adolescence as a largely neglected period in the life course by the global health community. The Second Commission published research and recommendations for advancing adolescent health and wellbeing amidst new developments that make the latter efforts more challenging. Among these are increasing concerns for mental health, rapid changes in the digital environment, and the widening of armed conflicts. Dr. Habito discussed the role of youth engagement in achieving goals of the Second Commission. She discussed the importance of involving the youth in defining their problems and proposing possible solutions. She also presented initial efforts at building youth hubs across Southeast Asia for these purposes.
