Games
Ci3 uses games as a vehicle to improve young people’s health and well-being. We also use games to enable young people to enter STEM and health careers, and to educate adolescents about critical social issues.
Each game-based intervention is created through collaboration with adolescents in the development process.
Example game topics:
- Teen pregnancy
- STI prevention
- Public health
- Epidemiology
- Smoking prevention
Game formats:
- Board games
- Card games
- Computer games
- Alternate reality games
- Interactive apps
Sample Games
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Caduceus Quest
This theory-based digital role-playing game provides health education and encourages health and biomedical science career interest in Black and Latinx young people.
Hearsay
This storytelling card game educates players about various forms of contraception and PrEP while also de-stigmatizing and normalizing their use among young people.
Smokestacks
In this game, players assume the role of a tobacco executive whose goal is to make money despite customers’ deaths from tobacco-related diseases.
Lineage
Lineage is a blended digital-analog game in which players explore the breadth and history of reproductive justice movements in the United States through the Story Web, which features activists whose voices and stories are part of those movements.
Step Up
Step Up is a digital game-based bystander intervention for high school students to understand the importance of diversity in STEM, and to acquire the skills, attitudes, and awareness to attain positive STEM identities and mitigate bias and harassment in STEM and health learning environments.
Babytown
In Babytown, players have a possibility of becoming high-school parents and must try to balance their GPA, finances, and social life with their baby’s health and happiness.
To further explore the history of using narrative methods and games in public health at Ci3, we recommend “Transmedia Stories: Narrative Methods for Public Health and Social Justice,” authored by Patrick Jagoda with Ireashia Bennett and Ashlyn Sparrow.