Heartbeat: Youth Health Champions have super sidekick in SWB library service

June 13, 2019

For a lot of the students at St. Michaels Church of England High School in Rowley Regis, the focus of the Easter holidays may well have been chomping some chocolate and relaxing. But for the school’s Youth Healthcare Champions there was much more to discuss and our colleagues were able to assist.

Our library and knowledge services partnered with the 21st Century Child Coordinator for Sandwell Council, Lydia Dunn, to deliver a training session to a group of 16 young people at St Michael’s High School on how to find the best ways to search for and source health information.

The session came as part of the student’s work on promoting healthcare matters for people in their own age groups. Nicola Ager, Service Development Librarian and Preeti Puligari, Library and Knowledge Services Manager were on hand to give tips and answer questions for the groups whose projects included topics such as body image.

Preeti said: “This training has equipped the school children with the right knowledge to research reliable health information and cascade health message to their peers in the borough. The library has also bought some educational board games that these school students could use to deliver this training in the community.”

Nicola added: “The students engaged in the discussions well and were very receptive to the information we were giving them. We talked to them about finding good quality health information for the topics that they will be delivering information about to other students.”