BACKGROUND:
Youth flourish when key aspects of their lives are sustainably good.1 Globally, however, youth well-being has declined for over a decade, with increases in depression, obesity, self-harm, and loneliness, among others.2-6 These challenges underscore the need for public health approaches that support multiple dimensions of well-being simultaneously. Research typically focuses on high-functioning individuals rather than areas where most youth flourish7-10 and isolates domain-specific determinants11-13, practices that significantly limit our ability to design environments that protect and promote holistic youth well-being at scale. Also, existing youth well-being indices are usually not sensitive to differences by social category.

OBJECTIVES:
Conceptually inspired by the Blue Zones of Longevity14 , we will develop a framework to locate and study Flourishing Youth (FLY) Zones globally—best-practice geographic areas where youth collectively and consistently experience high well-being across multiple domains over time. Using Canada as a pilot project, we will first identify and weight youth well-being dimensions; second, evaluate Canadian administrative and population-level datasets for their coverage of the identified youth well-being dimensions; third, identify and weight key determinants of youth well-being that are available and not available in open-access Canadian micro-level datasets; and four, integrate insights from Objectives 1–3 to create an equity-focused geospatial framework for locating FLY Zones and outline an interdisciplinary empirical approach to study shared, place-based well-being determinants. Expected Impact: This project will deliver the first equity-focused geospatial framework for identifying and profiling FLY Zones, and outline interdisciplinary strategies for an in-depth, systemic study of their characteristics. The resulting framework will be adaptable across various country contexts. We will move youth well-being research beyond fragmented, individual-level studies toward a systems-oriented, context-based public health strategy, providing the basis for future empirical studies and policies to build environments where youth flourish at scale.