The surge in postsecondary students reporting mental health concerns, coupled with increased utilisation of on-campus and hospital-based mental healthcare, highlights a need to understand effective service navigation. To address this system gap, the University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) leveraged their unique expertise and resources to develop the University of Toronto Navigation (UTN) service. UTN introduces care navigators to facilitate postsecondary student transitions from acute mental health services to community or campus mental healthcare. There has been limited implementation and evaluation of navigator models specific to the postsecondary context to date, which hinders scalability. This paper describes the study protocol of Navigation to Enhance Post-Secondary Students’ Acute Mental Health Care Transitions, a study that aims to collaborate with students, navigators and clinicians to evaluate the UTN service.

A one-stage, single-arm multimethods study design will be used to evaluate the UTN service. We will recruit 103 students following their UTN intake appointment. Students will complete quantitative measures assessing health outcomes, experiences of care and service utilisation at baseline and at three subsequent time points across a 6-month follow-up period. The quantitative data will be linked to administrative healthcare data. The primary evaluation outcome will be defined as attending an appointment with an appropriate care provider (in person or virtually) within 30 days of discharge from the hospital. We will conduct interviews with students and referring clinicians to gather perspectives regarding their experiences and satisfaction with the UTN service in greater depth.

Research ethics board approvals have been obtained from the University of Toronto and CAMH. Results will be disseminated through publications and presentations, and a toolkit will be cocreated to support implementation and adaptation of hospital-based navigator interventions in postsecondary contexts.

To characterise the information needs and experiences of receiving COVID-19 vaccine information by youth with mental health concerns.

Thematic analysis of semistructured interview transcripts.

Semistructured interviews via WebEx video conferencing or by telephone.

46 youth aged 16–29 with one or more self-reported mental health concerns and six family members of youth.

Our analysis generated four main themes: (1) information content and characteristics; (2) critical appraisal; (3) modulators of information-seeking behaviour; and (4) unmet information needs.

Our findings suggest that youth with mental health concerns have unique information needs and processing patterns influenced by their environments and experiences with mental health concerns. Participants identified barriers to receiving reliable health information and suggested ways to improve this process.