Young people’s perspectives
Health practitioners, researchers and policy makers have particular approaches to what’s important in young people’s health, and on what should be measured. Sometimes these are based on, for example, international classifications of disease groupings. These may not always coincide with what young people think is important. Understanding young peoples’ perspectives on health topics and how to measure health outcomes is critical to improving services. This page sets out some starting points for people who want to find out more.
“I think it’s important to have data about health because if you know what’s more likely to give you certain illnesses, then if you can prevent it, it might be better than trying to live with it and having to take medication for it.”
More sources of young people’s views on health topics
There is a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data about young peoples views on health and health services. There are too many to list them all but these are good starting points:
AYPH’s participation work with young people
AYPH is committed to increasing young people’s influence over health policies using group work and popular education methods to facilitate projects that focus on particular populations, sectors or health topics.
Healthwatch’s searchable database
The Patient Experience Library can be searched for ‘children’, and ‘Healthwatch reports’, bringing up a useful collection of local reports on what young people think about various health topics
RCPCH & Us
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health’s youth participation function, including a range of resources, guides and activities created with and by children, young people and families.
Blogs about data by young people
AYPH’s youth interns share reflections on developing Key Data for Young People.
The impact of COVID-19 on young people in university and at work
Jose Vinaixa Kinnear was a Policy and Communications Intern with AYPH in the autumn of 2021, helping with the final stages of publication and dissemination of the next edition of ‘Key Data on Young...
Trying to pin down UK youth homelessness data
Lucy Ross was a research intern at AYPH, helping to collate data for ‘Key Data on Young People’, which AYPH publishes every two years. In this blog she explains some of the challenges of pinning...
Our impact on Key Data and Key Data’s impact on us
In March 2021 AYPH hired two interns to work on the Key Data on Young People 2021 resource. As their internships came to an end Lucy Ross and Eva Whitaker reflected on their impact on the data and...
Data that have surprised us as young people working on Key Data
Eva Whitaker and Lucy Ross were research interns at AYPH in 2021, helping to collate data for the next edition of ‘Key Data on Young People’. In this blog they share their reaction to some of the...