Fellowship Impact · Research Capacity · Youth Mental Health
Building the Future of Youth Mental Health Research
The Youth Mental Health Research Fellowship is designed to strengthen research capacity and empower the next generation of youth mental health leaders in low- and middle-income countries.
Through mentorship, collaboration and hands-on research training, the programme supports fellows to generate evidence that can transform youth mental health systems globally.
Implemented under the Being Research Excellence Hub on Emerging Stressors for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing · GIHD / University of Oxford
Impact at a Glance
12 monthsStructured learning & real-world research
GlobalInternational mentorship network
Multi-disc.Psychology, public health & social sciences
PolicyEvidence informing systems & practice
FreeNo tuition fees charged
12 months
Fellowship Duration
180+
Countries via TGHN Network
5
Partner Institutions
2
Fellowship Tracks
The fellowship is built on a simple conviction: research capacity must grow from within the communities it serves. By investing in early-career researchers and young people with lived experience across LMICs, the programme creates lasting, locally grounded impact — for individuals, for research systems, and for the young people whose lives depend on better evidence.
Programme Overview
Impact at a Glance
Four pillars define the way this fellowship generates and sustains its impact across individuals, institutions and systems.
12-Month Fellowship
Structured learning and real-world research experience designed to build lasting competency, not just course credit. Fellows leave with a supervised original study and a professional network.
Global Mentorship
International experts individually matched to each fellow, providing guidance on research development and career pathways across the full 12-month programme.
Multidisciplinary Learning
Psychology, public health, psychiatry and social sciences working together. The fellowship deliberately bridges disciplines to produce researchers who can see the full picture.
Research to Policy
Evidence generation that informs youth mental health policy and practice. Fellows develop science communication skills alongside research methods from day one.
Individual Impact
Impact on Fellows
The fellowship's impact begins with the individual. By the end of the programme, every fellow will have developed a substantive professional foundation in youth mental health research.
Inclusive Research
Integrating Lived Experience
A key strength of the fellowship is the formal inclusion of young people with lived experience of mental health challenges as equal partners in the research process — not as consultation add-ons, but as co-investigators with full credit and structured support.
Lived Experience Track
Why lived experience makes the research better
Research that integrates lived experience produces evidence that is more relevant, more trusted and more likely to result in services that young people actually use. This is not a values statement — it is an evidence-based approach to research design.
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Research reflects the real experiences of young people in LMIC contexts
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Produces more relevant and meaningful insights for communities
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Supports youth-led advocacy and community-driven innovation
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Formal co-investigator credit on all research outputs and publications
Lived experience strengthens the connection between research, communities, and real-world impact.
System-Level Impact
Strengthening Research Capacity in LMICs
Many low- and middle-income countries face a chronic shortage of training and mentorship opportunities in youth mental health research. The fellowship directly addresses this structural gap through four interconnected mechanisms.
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✓Structured online research training — peer-reviewed curriculum covering the full research lifecycle, available to fellows regardless of location or bandwidth constraints
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✓Connection to international mentors — individually matched relationships with experienced researchers across partner institutions in five countries
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✓Cross-country research collaboration — cohort-level peer learning and writing groups that build lasting professional relationships across LMIC research communities
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✓Participation in global research networks — full TGHN membership connecting fellows to researchers, institutions and funding bodies across 180+ countries
Together, these mechanisms contribute to sustainable, locally embedded research capacity in partner countries — building a cadre of researchers who remain in their contexts and produce evidence for their communities long after the fellowship ends.
Policy & Practice
Impact on Youth Mental Health Systems
Research produced through the fellowship is designed from the outset to be usable — connected to policy processes, responsive to the priorities of health systems, and communicable to the audiences who need it most.
Evidence-Based Interventions
Improving prevention and early support for young people by generating contextually appropriate evidence that informs the design and scale-up of mental health interventions in LMICs.
Better Mental Health Services
Supporting the development of scalable, acceptable and affordable programmes for young people through research that reflects what actually works in resource-constrained settings.
Stronger Policies
Informing national and global youth mental health strategies with rigorous, locally grounded evidence — and equipping fellows to engage directly with policy audiences as research communicators.
Partnership
Global Collaboration
The fellowship connects fellows with leading research institutions and international experts working in youth mental health. These partnerships are not nominal — they provide the faculty, mentors and institutional infrastructure that make the programme possible.
These partnerships strengthen knowledge exchange and global learning across every aspect of the programme.
Long-Term Vision
A Global Community of Youth Mental Health Researchers
Latest
Related News & Updates
Programme Announcement
January 2026
The fellowship has officially launched under the Being Research Excellence Hub. The programme aims to strengthen research capacity in youth mental health across LMICs.
Read more →Event
April 2026
The fellowship will host a webinar bringing together researchers and practitioners to discuss emerging research priorities in low- and middle-income countries.
Register to attend →