The SHINE team was delighted to be invited to participate in the Craigmount High School Health and Wellbeing Festival on 10thMay 2019. We ran workshops with small groups of pupils from S1 to S3, using the “Best Start in Life” activity. As you can see from the photo, pupils were invited to “spin the wheel” to explore the social and environmental factors, which impact on young people, as they are growing up. The pupils were given a number of elements relating to each factor and asked to rank them in order of importance to health outcomes. For example, within the Family factor, pupils were asked to decide if parents’ health, parents’ employment, parenting style or siblings would have more impact on their health. Where the pupils were unsure, the researchers had some handy research facts to help them decide – the discussions that ensued were thoughtful , perceptive and engaging.
In addition, sections of the South East Collaborative Health and Wellbeing data in a Pupil friendly format of the report were shared with the pupils to see whether they found it interesting or thought it could be useful to improving health and wellbeing for young people. Many of the sections of the health and wellbeing report linked directly to the social and environmental factors we had been discussing earlier. Pupils expressed a keen interest in the data and were readily able to identify a variety of uses for the data to improve health and wellbeing in the school community. The Pupil-friendly format, which was presented in infographics with text bullet points, was preferred to the adult format of the report, with longer text sections and bar graphs – this was useful feedback for SHINE and supports further development of the pupil friendly resource for schools.