Hiv education games

Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate.

HIV Basics. Minus Related Pages. Other Resources. Because the risks for HIV involve sex, people may feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about having questions. Many people are unsure about the facts or ashamed to admit taking risks. Good information and healthy behavior choices are the best ways to prevent HIV. Scientists are quite clear about steps that prevent HIV.

Even in the early years of the epidemic, when there were many unknowns, ways to prevent HIV were quickly outlined.

Abstinence and safer sex are still powerful ways to prevent HIV. Other ways to prevent HIV emerged more recently. While progress has been made in preventing and treating HIV, there is still much to do.

In , nearly 39, people were diagnosed with HIV in the U. An estimated 1. The symptoms of HIV may not appear for many years.

The only way to know for sure whether you have HIV is to get tested. The CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine health care.

People who learn their HIV status can take steps to protect their overall health, get treatment if they test positive for HIV , and take steps to keep themselves and their partners healthy. ART, or antiretroviral therapy, can reduce the amount of virus in the blood and keep HIV from hurting the body. As a behavioral scientist, she is interested in using games to change behaviors, as opposed to simply supplying information.

She said, "It takes more than information. We have to ask ourselves, how can we use technologies to really change behavior? In the health arena, games have been used to educate patients about medication and their particular disease or condition. Games have also been used as a form of public education to inform about health risks, to provide basic public health education, and to increase understanding of and empathy for individuals suffering from various maladies.

They can teach about, and encourage, safe behavior through in-game rewards and goals. Most important, they can reach an audience that is increasingly tuning out traditional media e. Online games can be a cost-effective way of reaching very large populations without the significant distribution costs associated with offline education.

Tina Hoff told us, " Pos or Not is an analogue to the popular online viral game, Hot or Not , and was designed to engage young people in more personal ways about HIV and more specifically about who it affects.

Now that the game is live, players are invited to share comments and new ideas for extending its reach. When we asked her about the response to the game so far, Tina said, "In the first 24 hours, we had nearly to , unique visitors play, and more people keep coming every day to play and offer comments and new ideas. Video games have the potential to raise awareness and change behaviors, but with that potential comes challenges.

As we mentioned in a recent post , Marguerita's games have been quite successful, but because she is working with schools and community-based organizations, there are challenges in scaling up her video games to reach larger audiences. She told us, "At this point video games are an emerging field, particularly in HIV. We have some indication that they work.