By EyeYPAG,
Blog by Jumera,Last month at EyeYPAG we started our meeting with introductions and sharing our favourite things and least favourite things. It was really nice because some members came back that we had not seen in a while 🙂.
We also heard updates from previous research projects. One of these was the CLEARVIEW project, where the researchers used EyeYPAG members’ ideas in a funding application and now everyone is waiting to hear the result. We also talked about fundraising and found out about the upcoming Moorfields Eye Charity “Eye to Eye” walk, which sounded exciting.
Alicia Fothergill – Research Optometrist ran an activity about supplements for shortsightedness. Around the room there were printed sheets showing different things about the supplements, like the ingredients, packaging and what the supplements looked like. We worked together to decide which information was most important and least important from a child’s point of view. After that, we thought about where children would most like to get information from, such as social media, school assemblies or high street opticians. I used my knowledge of TikTok and YouTube Shorts to talk about how you could market there and grab young people’s attention, because I often follow social media for tips on skincare. It was interesting seeing how everyone had different opinions on what would work best.
Alicia reflected on her session sharing:
It was really useful to get the perspective of a younger group of CYP, their priorities in terms of using supplements were different to what I expected them to be, which was very useful to provide clarity about my project.
Later, researchers from the Child Vision Lab visited us and let us try some eye tests they have designed especially for children. One of them was a popping game on an iPad, which made the test feel more fun because it didn’t feel like a normal “test” at all. I got all of them right on the popping game, which made me feel really proud because I was concentrating really hard and reacting quickly. 
We also tried special glasses that can track where people are looking. It was interesting to see how technology can follow your eye movements and turn it into data for research. The researchers explained that they hope these glasses could eventually be used outside the lab to see how children use their eyes when they are playing in real life, not just in a controlled setting.
We talked about other eye tests we had done before and compared them with these newer ones. It was good to think about which ones felt easier, more fun, or more comfortable and why that might matter when testing children
Dr Roni reflected:
We will make adjustments to our tests based on the input from eyeYPAG and based on our observations on how they interacted with it. This was crucial input at this point in our test development.
Finally it was time for lunch, which was yummy pizza 🍕- my favourite! It was a really nice chance to catch up with the other members.
The afternoon was spent starting the design work for our poster to take to the iCAN SUMMIT in July. We got busy drawing and thinking about how we could include our eyeYPAG shared purpose into the poster:
Research Impact Community and Opportunity.
We also tested out some catchy titles, for example ‘Valuing Vital Visionary Voices’
I really love my time at YPAG because I get to meet people outside my school and make friends, and it is always interesting hearing different views and being part of real research.
Blog by Jasmine, Our second eyeYPAG meeting of 2026, in March, was a busy one! Group development We started by meeting our visitors for the ‘Shaping research for children with Stargardt’s Disease’ session. We then discussed our future eyeYPAG plans such as: The UCL200 family festival, where we will have an eyes and science table […]
Short animation exploring clinical research from the perspective of children.
This exercise develops knowledge of different types of research and related terminology. The task requires young people to match a phrase with its definition.
