How does medical research work? How can children and young people actively participate? And why is their perspective so important for the further development of medicine? These questions were addressed during this year’s project days organised by the Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Göttingen University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the German Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ). Under the motto ‘Empowerment: Medical Research for Students,’ students in grades 10 to 12 conducted research at XLAB, Göttingen’s experimental laboratory for young people, and gained insights into various projects and career fields in the field of medical research.
MBExC member Prof. Dr. Jutta Gärtner, spokesperson for the DZKJ and director of the Clinic for Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at UMG, says: “It is of central importance that children and adolescents are actively involved in the planning of medical issues and can thus also influence research projects that affect their own health. They ask questions that we would never have thought of ourselves, help to make complex topics easier to understand, and consider aspects such as the environment and nutrition that have not been taken into account in our research to date. In doing so, they provide us with valuable impetus for medical progress.”
You can find the press release (in German) here.
