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Eye-ce cubes needed at the 2nd eyeYPAG meeting! By Niamh

By Vijay Tailor-Hamblin,

The second Moorfields Young Persons Advisory Group meeting (also known as Eye-YPAG) was filled with information, updates and new faces on 29th June 2019 – a very hot, sunny day. To start with, there was a great speech by Jasmine and Rhianne about the Great Ormond Street YPAG, which is for children from 8 to 21 years old.

After that, Louca-Mai Brady, who runs the Eye-YPAG, got us thinking about how children can get involved in health research. We talked about the kind of questions we would like answers to. These are some of the questions we came up with:

  • can you stop being blind?
  • does sleep affect your eyesight?

We said that it is really important to have information about research projects in child friendly language.
We then did some awesome craft, making eyes out of egg boxes, pipe cleaners and pompoms to explain how the eye works and what the different parts are called. Annegret, the eye consultant, explained why and how some eyes were short-sighted. It was really good fun. We talked about a couple of her research projects too and answered some questions about how she might do her research in ways that work for children.

Model of retina made by eyeYPAG members

After the break, we worked in groups to make some short films about Eye-YPAG and why we like it. In each group, we had a director, a cameraperson, an interviewer and an interviewee. I really enjoyed doing the filming but it was harder than I expected. We watched each other’s films and they were really inspiring – they showed so many great reasons for being a member of the Eye-YPAG: really friendly staff, good food, making new friends and finding out about our eyes.
I can’t wait for the next meeting in the Autumn!