Youngsters get animated to drum up interest in NHS changes across Telford and Shropshire

December 2014

Young patients are setting out on a mission to encourage more 11-25 year olds to find out about the NHS Future Fit programme.


Future Fit aims to transform hospital and other NHS care for patients across Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and areas of Mid Wales.

Now a group of young people are proposing to produce a stop motion animation project that will explain the programme to their own age group. They also hope to launch a campaign on popular social media platform Instagram.

Those involved in the new project include 11-year-old Xander Ditchburn and Abi Fraser, aged 14.

Abi said: “I don’t think a lot of people of my age think Future Fit has anything to do with them, even if they have heard of it. But this will change hospitals and other care throughout our area for most of our adult lives so they should care.

“We were asked about the better ways of getting young people involved. People our age don’t want leaflets so we decided to propose a short film that can go on YouTube and other places online. We also think Instagram is by far the best site for reaching our age group.”

Xander and Abi are both members of the Shropshire Young Health Champions project which is funded entirely through the Big Lottery. It is a way of supporting younger people to have a greater understanding of health issues and how they can take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. There are currently 130 young health champions.

They recently met those working on the Future Fit programme to discuss how more young people could get involved with Future Fit.

Xander said: “They were really interested in what we had to say. They want as many people as possible to know what they are doing.”

We are looking forward to producing the animation and hope to have completed in the New Year to present to the Future Fit team.