Today the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a new study called Health Games Research which was created to provide assistance into researching the quality and usefulness of interactive games designed to improve the health of the general populace. The grant assigned for Health Games Research , which totals $8.25 million, is only part of the sums raised by the RWJF to research the likelihood of gamers being able to assist in the improvement of health and health care and also has the secondary purpose of forging links between the gaming industry and the health care industry that can be used to further prolong this research. The physical center for Health Games Research will be the University of California in Santa Barbara and will be managed by Dr. Debra Lieberman who bears the title communication researcher in UOC’s Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research.

Specifically the purpose of the study will be to build upon the research uncovered by the 2005 Games for Health Project which showed that games can assist in a variety of ways including increasing levels of physical activity, especially with such games as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero , helping with anti-smoking programs or assist with the maintenance of cancer treatment plans. Games also are used by members of the health care industry to sharpen their talents, plans for calamities that involve natural disasters and outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is due to the fact that the gaming industry, which is now a 7.4 billion dollar industry, has risen to such a widespread level of recognition that it has created a need for the medical field to understood how this medium can best be translated into a means of assisting their patients .

Dr. Liberman had this to say regarding the program’s aims: "Research on learning and behavior change with interactive media—including games—has found that they can be very motivating and effective. So it is no surprise to find in the research that playing a well-designed health game can help improve players’ health behaviors and outcomes.” She also went onto add that: "We need more research to develop evidence-based design principles that can be used in future health games and technologies. Studies funded by Health Games Research will make an important contribution toward this goal."

For more information regarding this study please visit this URL. http://www.rwjf.org/applications/solicited/cfp.jsp?ID=20001