The Mohn Centre brings together academics and year five pupils from a local school to discuss their views on health and wellbeing in White City.

The Mohn Centre for Children’s Health and Wellbeing has been working with three community partners since October 2022 to inform and shape the Mohn Centre's strategy, ensuring the Centre is representative of the people it serves. Together, with partners from Old Oak School, White City youth club and Nova, a group which supports families in North-West London, they have been exploring the important issues for children, young people and parents in relation to health and growing up in White City and neighbouring communities.  

Partners have shared their views, taken images of their local environment, given tours of their local area, drawn community maps and recorded their opinions.  

As part of this work, the Mohn team invited the Old Oak school class along to Imperial’s White City campus to further explore some of the issues raised during this process, bringing together the children with researchers from across Imperial including Professor Mireille Toledano, Dr Dougal Hargreaves, Dr Rachel B Smith, Dr Zoey Verdun and Dr Weiyi Wang. The class had a small tour around the Sir Michael Uren Hub, meeting researchers from the WellHome project, and discussed topics important to their health including air pollution, places in the community, food and digital technology.

Vicky Joshua, Old Oak School form tutor, said; “Working with the Mohn Centre team has been a valuable experience for all of us. It has allowed the children (and staff) in Year 5 to engage with Imperial, an important presence in our local community, and understand more about who they are. Asking the children about the local area and issues made them feel both valued and heard.

"Our visit to Imperial helped broaden the pupils' horizons whilst making Imperial more relatable. The Mohn team's fun and friendly approach allowed them to develop lovely relationships with the class, who were keen to communicate their ideas and experiences. The children were motivated, inspired and looked forward to all their sessions.”

Creative artist, Daniel Oduntan, is currently working with the Mohn Centre team to transform the content from all the engagement work into a short film, which will be premiered at an event in September 2023.

Dr Dougal Hargreaves, Houston Reader in Paediatrics and Population Health, said: “It has been a pleasure working with this class at Old Oak school over the past nine months and it has been great to see how their understanding of public health issues has grown over this time. The class have had a significant impact on the Mohn Centre’s thinking, and we look forward to showcasing the outputs of this work in September.”

If you would like to get involved and find out more about the Mohn Centre, please email Mohn Centre Scientific Manager, Charlotte Gredal.