Co-producing the future of medical research with young people

The Faculty of Medicine’s NIHR EACH-B project has released a series of short films made together with young people, to promote public involvement in the University’s, the Trust’s and NIHR research. Each of the films is aimed at one of young people, parents, public contributors or research funders and explain what it is like for young people and other members of the research team inc. participants, teachers, parents, PPI lay advisors and researchers to take part in research.

EACH-B works with the LifeLab project and is a programme of research to develop and test interventions to improve the diets and physical activity levels of teenagers. T

The aim of the films is to:

• Show young people that taking part in research is interesting, helps with understanding how science happens and is sometimes fun.
• Encourage public contributors to become involved in research because it makes the science better and offers them a way of making a difference.
• Persuade research funders that directly involving young people is effective and creates better science 

Professor Mary Barker, who is leading the EACH-B project: said: “Working with this group of talented individuals has sharpened our focus on involving young people in research. The videos are immediate and easy to consume, and they can communicate the emotions and excitement of research much better than the written word. This is a medium we will definitely be using again for disseminating our research. This project has also shown the value of handing over control to young people; the films have a freshness of ideas that we as researchers would not have been able to produce.”

Professor Barker has also written a blog about why it is important to involve young people in research not only as participants but also in deciding what areas we should be putting our research efforts.

READ THE BLOG