What is the youth Panel?
LifeLab was established to help improve the choices young people make about their own health that will have lifelong impact for themselves and their children. The approach has always been to enable young people to make those choices for themselves through their own scientific discovery and supporting them in acquiring those skills, evaluating the information, and acting on what they find out. The success of that approach has been through working closely with young people and educators to ensure our programmes, opportunities and qualifications continue to be relevant and useful. We hope to equip future generations with not only a better understanding of the impact of their health choices, but also develop the skills for lifelong learning and provide inspiration for young people to make a difference in their own communities. To help us achieve this goal, it is crucial that our work is shaped and developed with young people. The Youth Panel was established to enable us to co-create our work directly with young people.
Check out some of the outputs from our past Youth Panel Groups below, click on the images to either find out more or view what the students made.
What have our Youth Panels been up to?
Clinical Trials Videos
Summer Term 2022 (Academic year 21/22)
The very first Youth Panel were tasked with co-creating a series of animations to describe what clinical research is to our teenage audience, along with producing specific research stories. The panel formed the concept for an ‘In a nutshell’ series. Over three animations, the scurry of squirrels take the audience through ‘What is Clinical research’, ‘Why is Clinical Research important’ and importantly ‘How to get involved with Clinical Research’.
Exam Wellbeing
Autumn Term 2022 (Academic year 22/23)
Our 2022 autumn term Youth Panel have created and produced an online, interactive guide for students aimed at helping them navigate exam stress and look after their mental and physical health during the stressful exam period. The 19-page digital resource covers topic areas such as healthy eating, sleeping and time management and provides students with ideas, strategies, and tips to manage exam pressure and anxiety.
Vaping Resources
Spring and Summer Term 2023 (Academic year 22/23)
Our Youth Panels in the Spring and Summer terms of 2023 were asking the question ‘What’s the problem with vaping?’. They discussed their thoughts, opinions, and ideas around vaping, solutions to educate and inform, and signposting for young people who want to stop. Using the feedback from focus groups and input from staff at the Faculty of Medicine and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, who provided clinical and research expertise, resources were co-created with the Youth Panel to ensure the messages are effective, engaging and meaningful to the young people we are trying to reach. A Vaping VR experience has also been created along side these resources. Also check out out Policy Brief "How Young People See Vaping".
NxtGen (previously The Young Researchers Training Programme)
Summer Holidays 2023 and Autumn Term 2023 (Academic year 23/24)
NxtGen ( previously The Young Researcher Training Programme ) arose out of the recognition that if we are going to produce meaningful research that will benefit young people, we need young people to tell us what is important to them and to work with us to decide what the research should be, how it should be carried out and how it should be communicated. In the Summer Holidays of 2023 a group of young people piloted the programme and a series of videos were produced to be used as part of the delivery of NxtGen. The 2023 Autumn term Youth Panel were a pivotal part in the co-creation of not only the overall course, but the detail of each session too.
