The William Templeton Foundation for Young People’s Mental Health (YPMH) is an independent charity working to prevent and reduce mental ill health among young people – from early life to early adulthood.
Understanding of the factors affecting young people’s mental health continues to grow, but too many promising discoveries take years – sometimes decades – to improve the support, services and interventions available. YPMH works to close this gap by accelerating and improving the translation of research and evidence into practical, equitable and scalable action.
We bring together researchers, innovators, practitioners, educators, health and social care organisations, policymakers, funders and others able to help develop, fund, adopt or implement change. We engage young people, families and people with lived experience so that their needs, perspectives, priorities and experiences inform the work throughout. Through structured engagement, analysis and prioritisation, we help collaborators combine evidence, expertise and lived experience, develop shared understanding, identify and assess promising opportunities, advance potential solutions and support their implementation.
Our work is guided by Understand : Innovate : Implement, a methodology developed and refined by YPMH over seven years. Through long-standing collaboration with researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing and with IfM Engage, the Institute’s knowledge-transfer company, YPMH continues to develop and refine the methodology, drawing on IfM’s internationally recognised expertise in innovation management, roadmapping and innovation systems. This collaboration has been particularly important in the development of the Innovate component.
Understand : Innovate : Implement formed an important foundation for the Mental Health Catalyst, a major international initiative commissioned by Wellcome and led by IfM Engage. Drawing on its experience of developing and applying the methodology, YPMH has played a key role in adapting it to help the Catalyst accelerate the identification, development and adoption of new and better interventions for depressed mood.
