Answer:
Understanding the physical, mental, and emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for children and families will help to guide approaches to support families and children during the pandemic and after. As a team of child health researchers in Toronto, Canada, we assembled a group of parents and clinician researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify concerns, raise questions, and voice perspectives to inform COVID-19 research for children and families. Parents were eager to share their experience of shifting roles, priorities, and routines during the pandemic, and were instrumental in guiding research priorities and methods to understand of the effects of COVID-19 on families. First-hand experience that parents have in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with their families contributed to collaborative relationships between researchers and research participants, helped orient research about COVID-19 in children around family priorities, and offered valuable perspectives for the development of guidelines for safe return to school and childcare. Partnerships between researchers and families in designing and delivering COVID-19 research may lead to a better understanding of how health research can best support children and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Explanation:
