By Vijay Tailor-Hamblin,
In our 3rd meeting we discussed many important and educational issues including: trust, research on eye allergies, child-friendly information about research and future events. All our activities were extremely informative, fun and exciting.
Ethics:
We did an exercise about how children would feel about researchers asking them personal information.
We said “children may feel intimidated especially if they did not know this person well” we also thought “it would be better if they got to know the researcher well before they started asking personal questions. This would make the child feel safer and secure”.
Eye allergies:
A researcher called Mohsan came and talked to the group about his research on infectious eye disease. Some people get itchy eyes now and then (a common effect) but we that learnt some people get permanent eye itchiness which is actually an allergy. We were given images of an animal but in the way that people with eye allergies would see it so the images were very fuzzy. Some 
of the pictures were easy to see but others were tricker . We now know how some people see the world.
We then looked at a questionnaire and came up with ideas to make it more child friendly and understandable . We gave Mohsan lots of ideas that he will use to help him plan his research.
Child-friendly research information:
We wor
ked with Jacq, another researcher who works with the group, to give her our thoughts on information she’s planning to give children participating in her Ci2i research project. We talked about what kinds of information children and young people of different ages might need. One of the YPAG had drawn some great pictures which Jacq will use in the information sheets.
Future events:
When I say future events I mean fun and exciting adventures! We split ourselves into groups: one helping Moorfields researchers to plan a science fair and one to plan a workshop some of the YPAG members and adults are doing at a UCL event about children’s rights. Giving ideas means everyone at the meeting can be involved and we can’t wait to find out how it went.
In conclusion, the whole meeting was absolutely incredible. There was great food and exciting activities, thanks to Jacq and Louca –Mai!
First Zoom-YPAG KSS Meeting Successfully held on June 6th .
In this video from the inaugural Generation R meeting in 2013, YPAG members lead a discussion of why medical research is important.
These PDF wordsearches contain words relating to health research.
