Community mobilisation approaches to preventing and reducing adolescent multiple risk behaviour: a realist review protocol

Background Adolescent multiple risk behaviour (MRB) continues to be a global health issue, contributing to the burden of non-communicable diseases. Most interventions have focused on the proximal causes of adolescent MRB such as peer or family influence, rather than targeting the wider environmental or structural context. There is increasing recognition that community mobilisation approaches that extend beyond individually-focused educational programmes could be beneficial for adolescent health. Despite this, there are gaps in the current literature, theory and implementation that would benefit from a realist approach due to the suitability of this methodology to analysing complex interventions. In this protocol, we outline our study that aims to understand ‘how, why, for whom and in what circumstances and time periods do community mobilisation interventions work to prevent and/or reduce adolescent multiple risk behaviour?’ Methods A realist review was chosen as the most suitable review method as it is theory-driven and seeks to understand how, why and for whom interventions work to produce intended and unintended outcomes. A six-stage iterative process is outlined, which includes initial development of a programme theory, systematic searching, study selection and appraisal, data extraction and data synthesis. We will engage with stakeholders at different stages in this process to aid the development of the programme theory. Discussion The goal of this realist review is to identify and refine a programme theory for community mobilisation approaches to the prevention and/or reduction of adolescent multiple risk behaviour. Our aim is that the findings surrounding the programme theory refinement can be used to develop and implement adolescent multiple risk behaviour interventions and maintain collaboration between local policy makers, researchers and community members. Registration This realist review is registered on the PROSPERO database (registration number: CRD42020205342).