Young Persons’ Advisory Group

Children and young people are not just small adults – you have distinct physiological, developmental, and psychological characteristics. You deserve and must have the same access to high quality, evidence-based (from paediatric studies) health care as adults. To ensure that child health clinical research across Ireland is driven by your voice, the young person, this YPAG has been established. The aim of this YPAG is to ensure that research is relevant, responsive, and meets the needs of the young people affected.

You will be asked to attend a short online meeting every couple weeks (4-6 weeks) and a longer in person meeting on a Saturday 5/6 times a year. The in-person meetings will be held in different parts of the country. We will give you plenty of notice about these meetings and will help you prepare for them. We will also help you plan how you will get to the meetings. These meetings will be a great opportunity to meet fellow YPAG members, and to meet the researchers you’ll be helping. It won’t all be work though, as we will have plenty of opportunities to have fun! Food will be provided.

The YPAG’s work will differ from study to study but below are some examples of the types of work the YPAG will do:

• Work with researchers to design research projects
• Develop research questions
• Design information leaflets that are interesting for young people
• Heal researchers write grants for money for research
• Advise researchers on how best to recruit participants to their clinical trials
• Attend conferences and other meetings representing the YPAG
• Raise awareness of health research and the work of the YPAG on social media
• Attend courses and provide training to researchers and healthcare workers on how to incorporate the voice of young people in their work
• Come up with new research ideas
• Help promote the YPAG and clinical research on social media, websites, and through videos

We want your membership of the YPAG to be an opportunity to meet new people, contribute to research, and most importantly be a chance for you to have exciting new experiences!

Our YPAG is a joint, national initiative between In4kids and the Children’s Health Ireland Clinical Research Centre (CHI-CRC). Both groups are funded by the Health Research Board and their goal is to support our YPAG in the design and delivery of child health research in Ireland.

The day-to-day operations and functions of the YPAG are run by our amazing facilitators Shane and Sonia!