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More on health in other worlds
IFTF Affiliate Richard Adler pointed out to me this morning that my recent entry about efforts to study epidemic responses in virtual reality worlds failed to mention "Whypox."
It turns out that a few years ago, researchers from UCLA and USC launched and studied a virtual epidemic in "Whyville.net," which is a teen MMO (see above-referenced entry for definition) with over 1.5 million registered players ages 8-16. According to their report (PDF)/(HTML),
During an outbreak of Whypox, infected Whyvillians show two symptoms: red pimples appear on their avatars and the ability to chat is interrupted by "sneezing" (i.e., typed words are replaced by "achoo"). Whyvillians can track their disease in community graphs, post theories about its cause and transmission mechanisms, and make predictions about when the epidemic will end. They can also run simulations of the epidemic, read articles in the Whyville newspaper, and chat about it with each other. In early 2005, we observed the outbreak of Whypox and examined potential learning aspects of Whyvillians' experience. We gathered information about participants' online interactions and personal experiences with the disease to understand the impact of the event on different aspects of community life and its potential as a model for educational intervention
The report goes on to note that the virtual CDC established in Whyville played an important role in understanding the epidemic. Richard mentioned the CDC's presence in Whyville during his presentation on the "Future of Games & Gaming" at our Spring Pre-Conference Workshop. A copy of his PowerPoint presentation is available . . . .
Richard also informed me today that the CDC, which already has a space in Second Life, recently purchased an island in this popular 3-D virtual world. According to an article in GovernmentHealthIT, the new real estate acquisition is located near HealthInfo Island, another popular health destination where users can get information on a wide range of health issues. The HealthInfo Island project, a medical library and virtual hospital in Second Life, was developed by Carol Perryman, a PhD candidate at UNC. You can learn more about the project by visiting the island's information site and see images of it at the island's blog.
Why is a major government entity like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending time and energy building new "facilities" in a virtual world? As the CDC's John Anderton explains, each of the avatars in Second Life "is connected to a person and those people do have real health needs. . . . It's people's health CDC is interested in, and people are using different tools to access [health] information." What a great example of the "Anytime, Anyplace Health" trend we highlighted on the Global Health Economy map!