Advantage PCO has been the core PCO for the International Association for Youth Mental Health since 2013.  We have managed their biennial international conference since appointment in Brighton, UK (2013), Montreal, Canada (2015), Dublin, Ireland (2017), Brisbane, Australia (2019), and most recently in Copenhagen, Denmark (2022).

The Advantage team have considerable experience of managing international events outside of Ireland and as such, we relished the opportunity to deliver an overseas conference once again. Working closely with the local organising committee chaired by Danish organisation Det Sociale Netværk (The Social Network), the conference venue, Øksnehallen and Wonderful Copenhagen, the official tourism organisation of the Capital Region of Denmark, the Advantage team delivered another exceptional event for the IAYMH. We are now very excited to be well along the road to delivering their next conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada which will take place in March, 2025.

The 6^th International Conference on Youth Mental Health was unfortunately delayed due to the global pandemic, but one year, and several contract renegotiations later, we were delighted to welcome almost 800 delegates, all very eager to meet face to face again, to one of Copenhagen’s most established venues for events, exhibitions and conferences. Øksnehallen is located in the heart of Copenhagen’s historic Meatpacking District (Kødbyen), with it’s convenient location making it extremely accessible for all attendees.

The 3 day programme, including pre-conference Workshops, took place from 29^th September – 1^st October, 2022. With a theme of Reimagining | Youth Mental Health attendees gathered from 43 different countries around the world to the wonderful city of Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark.

The IAYMH’s mission is to change the way the global community thinks about young people and their mental health. They strive to do this by ensuring youth mental health services are appropriate to a young person’s age and stage of development, and that young people have an active voice in determining what is best for them. As such, in addition to a very diverse international audience, the IAYMH conference is quite unique in terms of the age demographic of attendees with almost one third of all participants aged 18 – 25 years. There is also a very wide range of backgrounds represented from students and youth workers to academics, professional clinicians and researchers, all working together to create a very special dynamic.

Key highlights included:

• Advantage worked alongside the local organising committee and key stakeholders to secure sponsorship in excess of €320,000
• In line with the Association’s focus on meaningfully engaging young people in conversations and advocacy for system change, Advantage managed the Conference bursary programme which attracted over 200 applicants and ultimately awarded domestic and international bursaries covering conference registration, airfares and accommodation to over 60 young people
• Management of all travel, accommodation, and presentation collection for all Conference plenary speakers
• Advantage built and managed the online abstract management system, and worked closely with the Conference Programme Committee to construct a dynamic and engaging programme. This consisted of 5 different presentation types ensuring a varied choice of exciting, variedm and interactive parallel sessions that were built from the over 650 abstract submissions received
• Build and management of the conference website and app providing valuable marketing and networking tools