By Louca-Mai Brady,
We started our in-person meeting with lunch – lots of pizza, garlic bread and salad! – along with some introductions. Some group members hadn’t met Lauren, the new YPAG helper yet, and we also met Helen, a researcher from the University of Cambridge. We then talked about some exciting plans that are coming up for 2025, including the opportunity to travel to Birmingham to meet other YPAGs, and visits schools to inspire others to come to groups like the Herts YPAG.
Ideas for research about the health of children and young people in the East of England
After lunch, we had a session with Helen, a researcher from University Cambridge and NIHR ARC. The NIHR ARC brings together representatives from healthcare services, people who use them, and researchers from different universities in the East of England, to help make services better for people who live in surrounding areas.
Using A3 paper with pens and post-it notes, we had to write down which groups of children and young people should be included in the ARC’s work, which physical and mental health issues we think are most important for young people in the East of England, which communities in the East of England should be focused on, and how young people – including the Herts YPAG – should be involved in the ARC.
Helen said: “I came away with lots of exciting ideas buzzing about my brain! I have shared the thoughts with my colleagues in the ChARM team at Cambridge, who are also working on the research proposal, so that they can be included in our research plan. They were all very impressed with what you had to say.”
SALIENT Update
Next, Claire and Jess from the SALIENT project gave us updates and asked us for ideas on how they could share the information they discovered, and how it would be best for people to view and learn about their research. We then did a SALIENT Christmas quiz on everything we remembered from their project!
Jess said “It was great to work with the YPAG again and give them an update on what is happening in the SALIENT project. This time, we were thinking about how we can share the findings from SALIENT. We spoke about who we can share the results with and how we can share them (my favourite suggestions were animated videos, and podcasts)! We ended with a Festive SALIENT Quiz, which the young people all did brilliantly in.”
After our hard work we had a Christmas party to celebrate. We played pass-the-parcel and pin the nose on the snowman. We also played Rudolph the reindeer, which was very difficult.
Merry Christmas from the YPAG!
After a break and some snacks and cake to celebrate some birthdays in the group, we made ‘Merry Christmas from the YPAG’ posters to share on social media, including this blog post!