A new, $8.25-million national research program to explore how interactive games can be used to improve health will be based at UC Santa Barbara, announced the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently.

The Health Games Research program will make grants to support outstanding research at institutions and organizations across the country as well as conduct studies, disseminate research findings, and work to bring new knowledge of the subject to a much broader audience.

“Health Games Research was created to advance the innovation, design, and effectiveness of health games and game technologies so that they will help people improve their health-related behaviors and achieve better health,” says Debra Lieberman, director of the program. She is an expert in the research and design of interactive media, especially video games, for learning and health behavior change.

Lieberman is a communication researcher with UCSB’s Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER), where the program will be housed. She also is a lecturer in the Department of Communication.

ISBER Director Sarah Fenstermaker, professor of sociology, says the foundation’s decision to base the new program at UCSB is an important development in an emerging field. “Health games research will be at the forefront of research support, innovation, and collaboration. Such focused activities will have an impact that reverberates to new practices and policies that can improve the population’s health.”

According to Lieberman, the goal of the Health Games Research program is to discover evidence-based strategies for designing games and game technologies that will promote and improve players’ health behaviors and health outcomes. “Research on learning and behavior change with interactive media—including games—has found that they can be very motivating and effective,” she said.

The types of games to be studied are games that improve health either by requiring physical activity in order to play the game or by enhancing the player’s health-related knowledge, skills, attitudes, self-concepts, and social support that could lead to better prevention and self-care behaviors.

Lieberman says the results of the program’s research will be widely shared.