Health Games Research is a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources to advance the research, design, and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies that promote health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio and headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  The Pioneer Portfolio supports innovative projects that may lead to breakthroughs in the future of health and health care.

There is both an art and a science to designing health games that are appealing, engaging, and impactful.  Health Games Research provides the science.

We work with creative game designers and artists to integrate well tested principles of learning and health behavior change into games that motivate players to improve their health habits and take better care of their health problems. 
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Health Games Research brochure

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Research Briefs

• Game Changer:  Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health (Executive Summary) by Ann My Thai, David Lowenstein, Dixie Ching, and David Rejeski, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
• Social Connection and Anonymity in Health Games by James Watt, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus and Affiliate Researcher, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
• More Research Briefs »

Featured Colleagues

• David Warhol, Founder and President, Realtime Associates, Inc., El Segundo, CA
• Barbara Chamberlin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Extension Instructional Design and Educational Media Specialist, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM
• More Featured Colleagues »

• A new peer-reviewed research journal will begin publication in Fall 2011. Games for Health: Research, Development, and Clinical Applications will include studies of health games and news from the field.

• The 1st annual Games for Health Europe conference will take place October 24 and 25, 2011, in Amsterdam.
  

• See an informative video about research on Lit to Quit, a breath-driven smoking cessation mobile game developed by our grantee Chuck Kinzer and his colleagues at Teacher's College. Watch the investigators play!
• Here's a new audio interview of our grantee Cay Anderson-Hanley of Union College and her senior research colleague Paul Arciero of Skidmore College. They discuss their Seniors Cyber-Cycling study, focusing on effects of physical activity on cognitive health.
• Leighton Read, our Featured Colleague, promotes games as tools for improving people’s health and the design of health care jobs.
• See videos and a slide show of Debra Lieberman's presentations at TEDxAmericanRiviera; UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media; Dust or Magic: Children's New Media Design Institute; UCSB Center for Information Technology and Society; and Serious Games Summit.