Co-designing place-based co-located health and wellbeing infrastructure and services with high school students, educators, and health service providers

Abstract

• Engaging young people as future users of a space enables responsive design. • Student voice is important in design of health and wellbeing infrastructure. • Nuances with needs and interests of users takes time to clarify and influences design. • Psychosocially safe spaces should be familiar but different from school or home. • Recognition, representation and resources are important for psychosocially safe spaces. This research involved working with high school students, teachers, Guidance Officers/School Counsellors, and other stakeholders, to co-design a new Community Hub to be co-located at a high school in a high-priority community. This article describes the co-design processes undertaken to engage children and young people and adult stakeholders in the ideation and design phase of infrastructure and service development to support health and wellbeing needs of a high priority community (low service uptake/high health needs). The key insights developed from these engagement processes pointed a way forward for the next stages of infrastructure and service delivery development and led to the development of several visual depictions of the complexities of stakeholder interests. This article argues that meaningful engagement of potential future users of place-based integrated health and wellbeing services enables responsive infrastructure designs that meet future needs of both target communities and service providers.