Blog posts

A young person’s experience of being involved in the Networked Data Lab

The Institute of Global Health Innovation partners with Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) and Imperial College London to lead the North West London Networked Data Lab (NDL).

The Networked Data Lab (NDL), funded by The Health Foundation, is a community of data professionals looking to solve the UK’s most pressing health care challenges since COVID-19. The North West London NDL is one of five NDLs around the UK that carries out data analysis on various topics based on local priorities, which were determined through community engagement and by the Health Foundation. Health care data is often fragmented, making reliable analysis difficult, but in North West London we have access to a depersonalised linked data set, via Discover-NOW, covering a diverse population of over 2.5 million. The NDL analysed how young people’s mental health and access to care was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arif, one of the 20 young people who attended the first public involvement workshop in May 2021, tells us about his experience of being involved and why he then ended up joining the project’s Young Person’s Advisory Group. 

This blog was originally posted online by Imperial College Health Partners.

Person writes with pen on a yellow post-it note

I saw an advert for the workshop in communications from a youth charity I’m part of. I thought it sounded like an interesting workshop because it was about coming up with priorities for research around young people’s mental health, which could then improve care. I wanted to represent my views as a young person with experience of mental health difficulties and to try to make a difference for other young people going through something similar.

“I think it’s so important to involve young people in projects like this – we should have a say in how services, which support us, run.” – Arif

More young people need mental health support than ever before, and services are struggling with increased demand – something needs to change. Who better to suggest changes than the people who have experienced the services and have ideas about what could make them better. We bring our own experiences and skills that are different to researchers and healthcare professionals. We can help unlock answers to issues that professionals might not have thought about.

After the workshop, we were asked if we wanted to apply to be part of the Young Person’s Advisory Group, to oversee the project from a young person perspective, which I was pleased to join. My role was to advocate the views of young people in the work and outputs and to make sense of the data. For example, we were presented the initial findings from the analysis of the data and then suggested areas that we thought would be interesting to explore further. The data analysts presented the different findings in a number of graphs and talked us through the significance of each. One of the findings was around how young women in North West London have been accessing more mental health services since COVID-19 and receiving more diagnosis and treatment than young men. However, when we discussed this in the group, we thought that it didn’t necessarily mean young men were not experiencing as many mental health difficulties as young women, but maybe young men were less likely to seek help. Having us look at the results, helped the analysts see that the results might not be showing the whole picture.

I also reviewed The Health Foundation’s national policy paper to make sure that the results were clear. The paper recommends that three key areas need urgent investigation, to help ensure children and young people universally get the care they need.

Image of report, with title "Briefing: "Improving children and young people’s mental health services". Below the text is the logo of The Health Foundation. These are, understanding:

  • The rapid increases in mental health prescribing and support provided by GPs
  • The prevalence of mental health problems among adolescent girls and young women
  • The stark socioeconomic inequalities across the UK

One key thing that stood out to me was the increase in prescribing medication to treat young people, that didn’t match an increase in other kinds of treatment. I think we need to understand why this is happening. To me, this suggests there are limited options for GPs to progress mental health support in other ways.

“Being part of this project, I’ve learned that implementing effective improvements is a long process and it cannot happen instantly.” – Arif

It takes time and resource. But I can’t wait to see the impact the results of the NDL will have on services and young people. I think the YPAG could help with ensuring the results are implemented, by meeting with some of the leaders, to help ensure they act on change. Having a young person at the table helps to add a face to the people who have been experiencing worsened mental health since COVID-19 and difficulty accessing services. We could share the results with our networks and empower young people to advocate to decision-makers about what needs to change, to urgently tackle this mental health crisis.

I would definitely recommend that young people get involved in projects like this. Not only can you gain valuable professional experience, but you can get involved in improving problems that might otherwise be overlooked. The amount of time we had to dedicate was manageable around my work commitments. And, I liked that there were Mental Health First Aiders as part of the team, in case any of us wanted to have a debrief after a meeting.

In terms of what could have been done differently around our involvement; I think it would have been useful to have more consistent communication and a stable point of contact. There were a lot of changes in staff, so we had three different Public Involvement Leads as our main point of contact, which got a bit confusing. Now that I am involved in a few projects, I think it would be really useful to be sent a brief summary of what has happened so far, to keep me up to speed and to keep the project front of mind.

If other researchers are looking to involve young people in their work, I would suggest to:

  • Have a clear idea of the time commitment that the young people would need to dedicate to the project and how often they would meet
  • Send clear and concise information with enough notice before a meeting
  • Involve people in the late afternoons or evening after work e.g. 4.30-7pm or in lunch breaks
  • Potentially, set up a WhatsApp group that could be useful to send reminders and get the group to work well as a team

 

If you are aged 16-25 and are looking to get involved in a project like Arif, sign up to Imperial College London’s Young Person’s Advisory Network.

Lights, camera, COVID-19! Working with young people to explore mental health through film

*CONTENT WARNING – eating disorders, mental health, loneliness*

Dr Lindsay Dewa is an Advanced Research Fellow in Mental Health at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London

A poster on a lamp post says "FILMING IN PROGRESS" in capital letters
On set in Twickenham during the filming

We all experienced COVID-19. Being socially isolated from those we loved was really difficult for most of us, and had a real impact on our mental health and wellbeing such as loneliness. 75% of mental health disorders start before the age 24, and young people were already going through challenging transitions: from school into employment, college and university, and maybe new relationships. But then COVID-19 struck and these transitions were made all the more difficult. Everyone had different coping strategies but eating-related coping strategies and having a good social connection with others were quite common. These are both highlighted in my research (Dewa et al 2021a, 2021b). 

 

“I truly believe connection in any form is so powerful and so important, no matter if it’s digitally or physically, we all need to stay connected to each other.” – Dylan

 

I was approached by a film production company, Inner Eye Productions, in December 2020 to make a film capturing the essence of the research, but also to use the same co-production principles applied in the research. We won funding from the Burdett Trust and West London NHS Trust and set to work with young people (aged 16-23 at the start of the project) to make a film drama in just over a year! All had lived experience of the pandemic, and some had experience of mental health difficulties.

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Reducing isolation – using co-creation to get people living with dementia online

Two people looking at a tablet

Our Helix Centre works to translate research into products that improve health outcomes. In this blog Alice Gregory, Designer at the Helix Centre, describes the creation of a ‘Digital Befriending Kit’ and toolkit as part of the Digital Inclusion Innovation Programme run by the Greater London Authority and the London Office for Technology and Innovation (LOTI). This blog was originally posted online by LOTI.

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Thoughts on the London Philanthropic Forum…

Photo from the London Philanthropic Forum Dinner including Simon Weston CBE, DEBRA President (left); Louise Murray (second from the left; Stuart Procter, COO of The Stafford London and DEBRA Vice President (second from the right); and Lenore England (right).

In this blog our Managing Director for the Centre for Health Policy, Peter Howitt reflects on his experience attending the London Philanthropic Forum.

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Digital health In settings of extreme adversity: improving quality of care for vulnerable populations

Improving the quality of healthcare delivery is a major priority around the world. However, the barriers to improving healthcare quality can vary significantly by context, environment, and population. In settings such as conflict-affected areas or areas of sustained humanitarian crisis, challenges to improving healthcare quality can be extremely complex. In this blog, the term settings of extreme adversity is used to describe these areas, but other terms such as fragile and conflict-affected and vulnerable states, have also been used in research. This blog is written by Olivia Lounsbury, Quality and Safety Programme Co-ordinator, John Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Using pulse oximetry to monitor COVID-19 patients at home

Image of a pulse oximetry device on someone's finger

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was riddled with clinical uncertainty. Technologies which could be used to monitor patients at home such as pulse oximeters were widely adopted by patients. But how safe is it to use a pulse oximeter at home when you have COVID-19? In this blog, we share IGHI’s experiences of being part of the COVID-19 Oximetry at Home Programme. This blog was written by Meesha Patel (Communications and Events Officer, IGHI) and Dr Ahmed Alboksmaty (former Research Associate, IGHI).

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Turning up: increasing cervical cancer screening uptake

woman sitting next to health staff

How do you remember your health appointments? Do you set a reminder on your phone, or wait for a health care provider to send a text? When invited for cancer screening do you book right away, or ignore it or forget as it makes you anxious, or as you have too much else going on?

These are some of the questions Dr Gaby Judah, a psychologist working on behaviour change at the Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, considers in her research to encourage people to attend their NHS cancer screening appointments.

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Give me space: how our co-designed face masks can help vulnerable people feel safer

Image of a face mask

Earlier in the pandemic, around 5% of Northwest Londoners were considered clinically extremely vulnerable and advised to ‘shield’. Although the shielding programme has ended, with the vaccination programme helping to lower people’s risk of becoming seriously ill, many are still avoiding social contact to continue to protect themselves, particularly as new variants continue to circulate.

Although all legal restrictions have ended in the UK, protective measures such as face mask wearing are still considered important to help curb the spread of COVID-19 and protect vulnerable groups. Charities have urged the population to continue to perform these behaviours to keep those at risk safe, while also allowing them to reconnect with society.

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Using design thinking to solve healthcare challenges – studying our MSc in Healthcare and Design

A healthcare and design team drawing on paper

Through our Master’s in Healthcare and Design, we aim to enable creative thinkers and change-makers to drive forward innovative, human-centred approaches to healthcare service delivery. If you want to lead innovation in healthcare systems, services and spaces, this is the course for you. To find out what it’s like to study with us, we caught up with Jeremy Chui, one of our alumni, who was awarded a distinction for this programme. Read on to explore some of the design projects that he worked on during his studies.

Combining medicine and design

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‘We were born global’ – IGHI’s latest Health Innovation Prize winners share their journey to success

Two women and a man looking at the camera

During our final year at Imperial College London, the three of us – Akhilesh, Jeannine and Hansa – came together with the vision to reduce healthcare inequity. Akhilesh was born and raised in London and is of Sri Lankan heritage. Hansa was born in India where she remained well into her teenage years and then immigrated to the UK with her family to finish high school, and has been in the UK for nearly a decade. Jeannine was born and brought up in Pakistan, where she is currently based, and spent four years at Imperial in the UK. So we have always known we wanted to break startup norms by starting off a business in a low-income country and then expanding that to the UK. We were born global. (more…)