The Young Persons Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) which is funded by the Great North Children’s Hospital Foundation, allows young people to have a voice in health care and research.
In 2018, the charity funded a full time Coordinator post to cover YPAGne and wider engagement within The Great North Children’s Hospital.
Jo Ball became the Young Person’s Advisory Group Coordinator, her role is focused on research and engagement and she is involved in a number of coproduced research projects.
Recently Jo has lead on a collaboration project between YPAGne & KidzMed. KidzMed which is led by Dr Emma Lim was created to help teach children how to swallow tablets and reduce the amount of medicine that is distributed to patients in place for tablets.
Dr Emma Lim from GNCH, approached the YPAGne group in late March to ask for feedback on the online resources the Kidzmed team had created to help children to swallow tablets.
The project quickly progressed to participating group members becoming citizen researchers and approaching friends and family to teach them the pill swallowing process.
There were initial barriers to conducting the project due to the pandemic, however the group were very motivated and continued to attend online meetings to keep things moving.
Throughout the process, group members were consulted at every stage, and given the autonomy to guide the direction of the project. The group reviewed the online resources then recruited friends and family to follow the online module.
Participants were directed to pre and post assessment questionnaires with the results currently being analysed by group members.
The group look forward to sharing the results with us in a few weeks’ time!
