How it Works

Learn about our surveys, the Icelandic Prevention Model & Planet Youth

We have to find a different way of addressing youth substance use.

Planet Youth Nogojiwanong, brought to you by PYSUP, is a group of community partners in Peterborough City and County who are working to create a healthy, supportive environment where our youth feel a greater sense of belonging and connection.

We recognize change doesn’t happen overnight. This collaborative, community-driven approach focuses on everyone working together in the long term.

Together, we can build upon the great work already happening in our community to:

Work to braid together Indigenous Worldviews and Western Methodologies
Make the positive factors in our community stronger
Reduce the risk factors that prevent youth success
Improve connections to nature

Collecting and analyzing local data is key to the success of the Planet Youth initiative. Students at Peterborough high schools are invited to participate in a survey.

Youth, parents, and the community are all part of this work.
Together, we can build a Peterborough that empowers youth to live their best lives.

By following these four steps to guide our work, we can identify youth-related issues in real-time using local data, and then work together as a community to address them. This means that all of our actions will be evidence-based, utilizing a community-based approach, and will foster and maintain dialogue among our community, research, policy & practice.

Learn More About Youth Surveys

Learn More About Our Local Approach

The Icelandic Prevention Model

The Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM) approach was developed in the 1990s in Iceland. At the time, Iceland had some of the highest rates of teen substance use in all of Europe. It was clear that traditional prevention methods, focused on teaching students about the risks of drinking and drugs, were not working.

Today, Iceland’s youth substance use rates are among the lowest in the world.

Their new approach emphasized getting all relevant partners to the table to build a network of support, monitoring, and opportunities for positive youth development at the local community level.

The IPM is a data-driven, population-wide model. It focuses on identifying community-level risk factors and strengthening protective factors to reduce youth substance use and other negative social outcomes among children and young people. The IPM emphasizes delaying the onset of substance use to reduce long-term health and social implications. The IPM has been documented and described in numerous peer-reviewed academic publications.

Watch: How Iceland saved its teenagers (BBC News)

What is Planet Youth?

Planet Youth is an international organization based in Iceland, dedicated to supporting the health and well-being of young people. Through a collaborative, data-driven approach (the IPM), Planet Youth partners with communities around the world to help them create safer, healthier environments where children and adolescents can flourish.

The Guidance Program is Planet Youth’s structured, supportive framework that helps communities around the world implement the Icelandic Prevention Model. Through training, resources, and ongoing collaboration, it empowers local leaders to create data-driven strategies that strengthen protective factors, reduce risks, and delay the onset of substance use among youth.

Changing the social environment requires collaborative participation of a wide range of community members, including youth, adults, and the service providers who care for our youth.

By guiding us through this process, Planet Youth helps communities identify youth-related issues in real time with local data, and then work together as a community to address them.

The change won’t happen overnight, but through years of working together to collect data and implement interventions, we can build an environment that empowers youth to be their healthiest selves.

Learn More About How YOU Can Be Involved!

Planet Youth Guiding Principles

Society is the Patient

Applies a primary prevention approach that focuses on developing an organized system to enhance the social environment in communities over time. Youth outcomes are a direct reflection of the environments they live and grow in.

Meaningful Connection is a Treatment

Enhances the connection between children and their families, peers, schools, communities, and adults. Schools are embraced as the natural hub of neighbourhood efforts to support child and adolescent health, learning, and life success.

Sustained Attention as a Treatment

Engages and empowers community members to make practical designs using local, high-quality, accessible data and diagnostics.

Builds Capacity for Leadership and Problem-Solving

Integrate researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and community members into a unified team dedicated to solving complex, real-world problems.

Match the Scope of the Solution to the Scope of the Problem

Encourages authentic assessment of the problem and the solution. It’s important to remember this effort calls for realistic timeframes, a long-term commitment and funding.

Global Community

Planet Youth Nogojiwanong is part of a global network whose aim is to create healthy communities that support young people to live their best lives.

Each community implements the Planet Youth framework using the same methodology but draws on its own survey data from local youth and takes action determined by the community.

Just as Planet Youth in Ireland will look different from Planet Youth in Argentina, the prevention activities implemented in Nogojiwanong-Peterborough may differ from the interventions implemented by other Ontario Planet Youth Partners.