See the post on Gamification and Global Health co-authored by Sandi McCoy and Dr. Raluca Buzdugan in the Berkeley Blog this month!
Now Recruiting!
We're recruiting 18-26 year old gay/bi/queer men in Oakland and Hollywood to participate in a project using gamification to improve sexual health. The rePLAY Project is a collaboration between AIDS Healthcare Foundation, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. Our goal is to strengthen the relationship between millennial gay/bi/queer men in California and existing sexual health programs. In order to do this, we focus on creating fun and engaging experiences using technology and games.
Want to join in on the fun? Click the link above to sign up!
Can gamification help prevent HIV infection?
The UC Berkeley, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and UCLA team.
We are proud to announce the launch of a new project to determine whether gamification, the use of game elements in non-game settings, can improve the sexual health of gay and bisexual men in California. The project is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and is a collaboration between UC Berkeley, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and UCLA. Our goal is to to encourage young high-risk gay and bisexual men to be regularly screened for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and to adopt safer sexual behaviors. The results from the study will provide guidance about whether interventions using gamification can reduce high-risk behavior and decrease the incidence of HIV and STIs among young MSM. Read more about the project in the UC Berkeley newsroom.
Time to play? Members of our team present on gamification and HIV/AIDS
This week I attended the yth live conference in San Francisco. It was an phenomenal opportunity to learn about innovative applications of technology to improve the health of adolescents and young adults. One of the highlights was watching our team members Dr. Raluca Buzdugan and Reva Grimball present their sexual health promotion game for men who have sex with men in Mexico City, a project in collaboration with Mr. Sergio Bautista-Arredondo of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico. Gamification's application to health was also demonstrated by Goalpost, a smoking cessation app that uses the power of social networks, game mechanics and medical research to help people achieve their goal of being smoke-free. Together the two applications are on the forefront of tools that combine game elements with education, behavioral economics, and psychology to improve health.