Clinical Trials Training Re-Imagined.
What happens when parents and youth become mentors?

The IMPaCT Evaluation Steering Committee
Family and youth partners alongside IMPaCT leadership co-designed an evaluation strategy to evaluate our mentorship program with three key goals:

✅ Accountability – Are we doing what we said we would?
🤝 Engagement – Are our practices truly connecting with youth and parents?
📈 Impact – What difference are we making for mentors and mentees?

The IMPaCT Evaluation Steering Committee gathered feedback through anonymous surveys and virtual reflection sessions with 11 parent/youth mentors, 5 academic mentors, and 9 fellows.

This wasn't evaluation as usual. It was a year-long collaborative conversation (March 2024–April 2025) where we listened deeply, then acted intentionally by synthesizing "what we heard" into "what we did." And when it was possible, we actioned changes immediately!

The Takeaways?

1. When you're introducing new approaches in clinical trials, evaluation isn't an afterthought; it's how you learn, adapt, and improve.

2. Real evaluation means creating space for lived experience to shape programs. It's not just about proving impact, it's about improving it.

Thank you to our IMPaCT Evaluation Steering Committee members for your time and dedication to co-designing an evaluation plan which resulted in deep learning from our parent and youth mentors as well as opportunities to hear from everyone involved in the mentorship program about their experiences with parent and youth mentors. And thanks to the IMPaCT community who provided feedback to the Steering Committee during open consultations. 

At IMPaCT, we introduced dedicated parent and youth mentorship to accompany our fellows as they design their clinical trial protocol, an approach that is truly innovative in the clinical trials space. After our inaugural year, we had two burning questions: Did it work? And more importantly, how do we make it better?

Using the Engage with IMPaCT Toolkit, we co-developed an evaluation approach to assess how engagement practices influenced mentors and mentees and the ripple effects of mentorship. The results? Eye-opening insights into the unique value of embedding parent and youth partners and the powerful opportunities for mutual growth that emerged.