Experience of involving children and young people in an evidence synthesis project designed to overcome data scarcity

Posted on 4 December 2025

CRD Research Fellow Ruth Walker has recently submitted her National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) funded Doctoral Fellowship project where she applied evidence synthesis methods to combine and reanalyse antiemetic research in paediatric cancer, with the aim of overcoming data scarcity within this area, and improving understanding of which interventions work best and for whom. She has involved children, young people and their families throughout and shares her experience of this.

Ruth has involved people with lived experience of nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, during the development of her grant application, to identify outcomes of importance, interpret some key project findings and to produce a patient-facing animation video that disseminates the results.

She has found this one of the most rewarding aspects of the project and recently gave a talk as part of the PPI for statisticians community of practice seminar series, describing how she involved people and the impact this involvement work had on the project.

She is working to develop this public involvement into a case study, that will hopefully inspire others to involve children and young people in statistically complex projects.