Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) has been engaging with the public on research, data and the environment as part of a local culture, arts and science festival with University College London (UCL).
The festival’s theme was ‘breathe’, to investigate local and global environments, and to develop the public’s understanding of the value of data and data research.
To further this understanding, GOSH scientists used micro-gardens to engage with children. Through this, the young people have learned about the importance of natural spaces in urban areas for enhancing health and wellbeing, with scientists demonstrating how they could use data to explore children’s health.
Other topics covered included the link between air pollution and childhood, monitoring children in intensive care, green spaces and mortality and drug dosing and fungal lung infections.
With an aim to work together to communicate the value of data research, staff from GOSH and UCL were joined by members of the Great Ormond Street Hospital Young People’s Advisory Group for Research. GOSH describe the event as a “smash success” with members of the public signing up to participate in research activities, particularly the YoDA project (Young Data Advisors), which seeks to create a national group to represent the voice of young people in relation to projects using routine data.
Ofran Almossawi, team lead and NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow from the faculty of Population, Policy & Practice Department at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, commented: “Engaging with the public and in particular young people is pivotal when it comes to using routine data. The data we use comes from the public and it’s really important that we ask them what research questions are most important for them.
“Young people are very savvy when it comes to social media and have strong opinions on the sharing of data. Children as young as seven have a good level of understanding of their personal information being private – they want a say in how it is used.
“For this reason, having a young person’s advisory group (YoDA) is an important step in facilitating meaningful engagement between researchers and young people, giving them a voice in how data can be used safely to benefit others.”
