Since April 2015 RCPCH &Us has worked with more than 17,500 children, young people and their families across the UK to help shape and influence the health decisions that affect them. This page contains a taster of some of the projects that have taken place over the last ten years.
To find out about our current projects and activities visit the Blogs and News pages, and Opportunities.
The National Paediatric Diabetes Audit (NPDA) Youth Communications Project
2024 – 2025
The National Paediatric Diabetes Audit (NPDA) Youth Communications Project was a 6-month project to help children and young people living with diabetes, or who are interested in it. The project worked with the College Diabetes Audit Team to find out how young people want to get information about diabetes care. The goal was to make sure the information is easy to understand and interesting.
Many young people joined the project to learn about the NPDA and share ideas on how to make sure everyone can access the information. They also helped decide the best ways to share it, like through social media, posters, and flyers that catch your eye and are right for your age.
The General Election Project
2023 – 24
The General Election project was formed to give children and young people space to have their say about child health priorities in the run up to the election in England. The campaign was put together using the voices from 600 children and young people across England, and wanted to inspire the government to make child health a priority.
The project group set up their own child health priorities and manifesto on behalf of children and young people. This included a video campaign on Iparl for lobbying with their local MP’s, and creating social media posts and posters to get their message across. The group worked closely with RCPCH’s general election manager to make sure their message was in line with that of the wider college, and worked with them to write a letter to the new prime minister.
Epilepsy Impact and Innovation Project
2023 – 2024
The Epilepsy Impact and Innovation Project was a year-long project working alongside Epilepsy services across England who took up the challenge to listen more to children, young people and their families about how their services could improve. Children, young people and their families also came together through a series of RCPCH &Us led ‘Innovation labs’ to develop key messages, ideas and resources.
The results included producing sets of conversation starters cards for doctors to use when engaging children and young people attending their clinics, a communication preferences poster to remind them of different ways of encouraging children and young people to express themselves, and a set of topic cards helping introduce tricky topics for conversation.
A selection of the resources made by children and young people on this project can be found on the RCPCH &Us Resources page.
COVID-19 Book Club
2020 – 2021
Throughout 2020 and 2021 we worked with young people (16-25 years old) to make sure their voices were heard and could inform and influence decision makers working on COVID-19 recovery plans.
In June 2020 six young people aged 16-25, alongside a trainee paediatrician and RCPCH staff, formed the COVID-19 Book Club, meeting for an hour each week online to review studies on the impact of lockdown on young people, and to identify key themes. They had training on how to read the studies, use collaboration software and understand the NHS recovery plan approach. This helped them to share the impact of COVID-19 on young people, from education, to their health, discussions and decisions about the vaccine, and in living in a virtual world.
The Book Club re-formed in May 2021 to look ahead to a potential vaccination programme for young adults and subsequently young people. They again identified and reviewed published insights from young people and young adults on the COVID-19 vaccine each week in their hourly meeting. As before, they invited external speakers to meet with them to discuss different issues such as consent, the scope of JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) and more.
