The University of Southampton

Author: Sian Bryant

Supporting #PowerOfYouth Day with an international thank you to our young people

Posted on by Sian Bryant

The LifeLab and EACH-B teams joined forces this week to take part in a national day of action to celebrate the contribution young people make.

The #PowerOfYouth campaign is nationwide collaborative effort aiming to empower more young people to make a difference, and give them opportunities to shape their future.

On Wednesday, 3 June, people were invited to share videos paying tribute to young people and recognising them as leaders of the future.

The LifeLab and EACH-B teams, along with their supporters from across the world, put together a video to thank those young people who they have been working with across a number of research projects, particularly through the Covid-19 pandemic .

This research was sparked by consultations that took place with young people on the day of the lockdown, prompting a study to begin – TeC-19: Teenagers experiences of COVID-19.

This study has led to the production of support materials, the #ForOurFuture pack, a free downloadable pack that signposts young people to opportunities and organisations that can support them in keeping active and taking part in activities from volunteering to new interests, academic skills and brushing up their CV.

The TeC-19 project protocol is now being used by research teams in sites across the world in a project led by Polly Langdon.

You can watch the teams’ #PowerOfYouth video here.

Going virtual with our Meet the Scientist sessions

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scientists

A popular part of the LifeLab experience has always been the Meet the Scientist sessions where researchers from across the University Hospital Southampton and University of Southampton communities showcase their work.

Right now while we are not able to welcome students into our labs to meet these wonderful army of volunteers face to face, we are working on ways to allow them to continue to inspire the next generation online and digitally.

We want to be able to ensure they are still able to spark the enthusiasm and inquiring minds of our young people by telling their stories on video and online sessions.

Watch this space for more details on where you can see their inspiring work and learn about their career path and experiences. In the meantime if you are a researcher or scientist and would like to get involved in the sessions please email our team at lifelab@soton.ac.uk to find out more and a huge thank you for all those who have done so already.

Our existing volunteers always tell us of the huge rewards they get out of the sessions, and we are hoping to translate that into our online work.

Professor John Holloway who has delivered face to face sessions, said of his experience: “I would encourage all faculty researchers to participate in this scheme. It is a great way to illustrate your commitment to public engagement that research funders expect.”

Talking about the impact the sessions had on him, John said: “It reminds me about the sense of enthusiasm I had and what attracted me to do science in the first place.”

Other volunteers have spoken of how the sessions have made them look at their research in a new light and how they were the first stepping stone to a more confident approach to public engagement.

If you would like to volunteer email lifelab@soton.ac.uk. Find out more about the impact the sessions have had on volunteers here.

LifeLab moves support online to enable young people to complete qualification

Posted on by Sian Bryant

When the lockdown forced us to close our doors at Lifelab, we were midway through an exciting year of research and projects all aimed at supporting young people in making healthy lifestyle choices.

One of those projects was delivering the Royal Society for Public Health’s Young Health Champions (YHC) qualification with a group of students from Thornden School.ewan1

The YHC qualification, developed by RSPH trains young people up to become ambassadors for healthy lifestyle choices.

Along with increasing their own understanding of why good health matters, the students are trained to become effective ambassadors in their own communities, with skills to signpost their peers to further support if needed.

LifeLab is an accredited centre to deliver the Level 2 qualification and last year was awarded the ‘Centre of Excellence’ Hygeia award by RSPH in recognition for the quality of our work.

The group of Year 9 students had completed three of the four units for the qualification, when the restrictions were imposed.  After reviewing the syllabus, LifeLab educators came up with a plan to enable the students to complete the qualification online.

LifeLab lead for YHC, Lisa Bagust explains: “Despite not being able to work with the students at LifeLab we have been looking at how our work can continue by keeping in touch in other ways. Having reviewed the final unit the students needed to complete we felt we could provide the right support in order to deliver it online and so have set up virtual meetings to enable that.”

“The students’ final task is to deliver a health campaign in their own communities which ordinarily would be delivered in school, so they will have to adapt their campaigns to be able to be delivered online and also to consider how best to reach their peers.”

“Those campaigns could be on topics like physical and mental health, sleep patterns and social media use; all really relevant issues for young people in the current time. We’re excited to see what they come up with.”

The group held their first online meeting this week and are now working on the challenge of creating their health campaigns online.

They will be considering how they can deliver their campaign outside of school using other platforms than face to face contact with their peers at school.

Student Ewan, 14, said he was pleased to have been able to complete the qualification.

“It would have been a shame if the work we had put in didn’t count for anything so I am pleased we get to finish it off. I have really enjoyed doing the course because I have learnt much more about why health matters and I think it is important to try and help other people who might need support.”

What we are sharing through #ForOurFuture campaign this week

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Each week we will be highlighting opportunities for our young people to take part in or try out. All will be online and free to access and will enable young people to stay well and active or encourage new opportunities or activities.

May 11:

All week:

Throughout this week Southampton Hub, an organisation that features in our forourfuture-pack is running their own fitness campaign on social media under the hashtag #stayinworkout. Follow @southamptonhub to find out more. Download the stayinworkout-how-to poster or check out the tweet below for more information.

Supporting our young people through #FOROURFUTURE

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Recognising the impact of COVID-19 on our young people has become LifeLab’s new mission. We may not be able to open our labs up physically to help empower young people to make positive lifestyle choices, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do that virtually.fof-logo-1

Using our team of educators and our network of supporters we have pulled together a resource pack that pulls together a number of opportunities resources ranging from academic, skill-based and volunteering opportunities to support for physical and mental health.

Under the heading #ForOurFuture, we hope to provide a hub of information, signposting young people to the opportunities available to them from their homes.

Through this pack and supported by a social media campaign using the same hashtag, we hope to create a community where our young people can feel supported by sharing opportunities that are open to them, free of charge.

To download the whole pack, click on this link forourfuturepack

We will also be sharing ideas and tips online and encouraging our community of young people to share and inspire others to get involved.

Visit our blog here to discover some of the latest ideas we are sharing. Don’t forget to use the #ForOurFuture hashtag on social media.

Inspire others to keep active during COVID-19 isolation

Posted on by Sian Bryant

Recognising the impact of COVID-19 on our young people has become LifeLab’s new mission. We may not be able to open our labs up physically to help empower young people to make positive lifestyle choices, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do that virtually.

Right now we are pulling together all our expertise, knowledge and resources to help support our young people through this difficult time. We are already running a series of online forums as part of a live research project to discover the impact of the pandemic on younger generations. We hope this will help inform policy makers on how to get messaging across that resonates with young people but also give real insight into the effect of cancellations of exams, closure of schools and isolation is having on teenagers, particularly school and college leavers.

Read more about that work here.

We are already hearing a clear message from our young people about how they are struggling with the lack of purposeful activity, an unclear pathway to their next step and lack of interaction with society. challenge

As a result we are now making great links with new partners to try and link up the young people with opportunities that are already out there… and here is one of them:

The Southampton Hub, an organisation that ordinarily supports students to volunteer in placements in the local community, is running an Active Social Media campaign this month. It involves a week long challenge campaign on social media beginning on 27 April.

The idea is that young people can take part in a series of physical challenges and post them on their social media accounts. Each day a volunteer is needed to present a challenge via video or text and are inviting young people to submit their suggestions to be in with a chance of being featured.

Example challenges include ‘do 20 star jumps’; ‘do 5 push ups’; ‘throw a ball up and clap as many times as you can’; ‘throw a paper ball into a bin from as far away as you can’.

You can get as creative as you like! If you would like to be involved with the campaign you will need to send in one of the following options by Friday 10 April:

Either:

– a motivational quote, a video of you outlining and doing the challenge with a written transcript

or

– a motivational quote, a photo of you and text outlining the challenge which we can make into a graphic

or

– a motivational quote, a photo of you and text outlining the challenge which we can make into a graphic

For more information on how you can submit your suggestion, please visit the Southampton Hub website here.

Doing your bit for climate change

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LifeLab has been involved in a new engagement project with colleagues from across the University of Southampton.

Dr Mark Chapman from Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences and Dr Lucy Green from Human Development and Health based at the Institute of Developmental Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine have teamed up with LifeLab to create a hands-on research project for teenagers, with funding from the Public Engagement with Research unit (PERu) at the University of Southampton.

Using the same self-discovery approach that has underpinned the success of LifeLab, the new project is aimed at giving students the space and resources to understand for themselves what impact their health choices could have on climate change. As part of the project Dr Kathryn Woods-Townsend and Claire Colbain, LifeLab’s technical lead, have developed an escape room style activity that aims to engage young people and enhance their learning through a series of tasks and challenges. This activity is being developed for public engagement events. After completing the event, participants have the opportunity to take away action cards that suggests how a small change in behaviour can add up to a big impact. Here are some examples below:

 

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Professor John Holloway on the value of Meet the Scientist sessions

Posted on by Sian Bryant

A new phase of the LifeLab story has begun with our first students taking part in the EACH-B research project.

Hampshire students were the first to download a new smart phone app that has been developed as part of EACH-B,  the latest research phase of the LifeLab intervention.

The health education project is based on young people discovering for themselves how their lifestyle choices can affect them and EACH-B is building on that with the use of the app, along with young people being supported by teachers in school.

A popular part of the LifeLab experience continues to be the Meet the Scientist sessions where researchers from across the UHS and University of Southampton communities showcase their work.

Along with inspiring the students, the opportunity is hugely rewarding for our volunteers who get the chance to present their work to a new audience.

Professor John Holloway said of his experience: “The opportunity to take part in Meet the Scientist sessions has been incredibly valuable for me. There is nothing like having to explain your work to a group of enthusiastic teenagers for making you think about how to engage an audience.

“I would encourage all faculty researchers to participate in this scheme. It is a great way to illustrate your commitment to public engagement that research funders expect.”

Talking about the impact the sessions had on him, John said: “It reminds me about the sense of enthusiasm I had and what attracted me to do science in the first place.”

Other volunteers have spoken of how the sessions have made them look at their research in a new light and how they were the first stepping stone to a more confident approach to public engagement.

If you would like to volunteer email lifelab@soton.ac.uk. Find out more about the impact the sessions have had on volunteers here.

 

First download of EACH-B app as students take part in the new project

Posted on by Sian Bryant

The LifeLab team were excited to begin their brand new research study this week with the first cohort of students taking part in the Engaging Adolescents in Change Behaviour (EACH-B) programme.

The health education project is based on young people discovering for themselves how their lifestyle choices can affect them. The EACH-B project builds on the intervention, combining it with support from teachers and the use of a specially developed smart phone app with game features.


Students from Hamble School were among the first to experience the new intervention being led by Professor Mary Barker, a psychologist and director at LifeLab who specialises in the development and evaluation of behaviour change interventions designed to improve diet, physical activity and well-being.

The EACH-B project is built on the existing LifeLab programme which aims to help young people understand how the decisions they make now could have health implications in later life.

Teenagers who visited LifeLab, which is based at University Hospital Southampton, helped produce the digital game, alongside health researchers and scientists.

Those ideas were then sent to in-game designers at Glasgow Caledonian University who created it and then tested on LifeLab students.

The aim is to educate young people about the impact their lifestyle choices will have on their health and the health of their future children and encourage them to improve their diet and exercise habits.

The £2.2m EACH-B project, led by the University of Southampton, is being funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme.