Active Video Game project & Blackstone Community Center

Hoping to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity and improve health among low-income children, a research team at Northeastern University is launching an innovative, five-year program to get kids moving and motivated to exercise.

The Active Video Games (AVG) Project, led by Dr. Amy Lu, assistant professor in the College of Arts, Media & Design of Northeastern's Bouvé College of Health Sciences, is working with Fable Vision Studios, located above the Children's Museum, to develop character-driven stories to serve as an introduction to Xbox-based active video games with the goal of drawing children into playing the games for exercise. In the first phase of the project, Lu's team will show the stories to children aged 8 through 12 at the Blackstone Community Center and administer a survey seeking their responses to the stories and characters.

The team will share the data collected with Fable Vision Studios, a video, animation and app production studio located at the Children's Museum on Congress Street, to refine the stories and characters and make them appealing and relatable to local children. In the next phase, children will play the games for four sessions at the Blackstone Community Center and their activity level will be monitored for their activity level while playing. Children who participate in the AVG project will receive a $10 gift card from Amazon, and BCC as well as any future sites of the AVG project will be able to keep the game equipment and monitors permanently.

"We are trying to extend the duration of play among children. We would like to use stories to get children to play more actively and with greater intensity over longer periods of time," Lu explained.

All three members of Lu's team share a public health focus that drives the AVG project's creative approach to improving children's health. Lu's area of inquiry is in media technology and its utility in influencing behavior, especially through the use of video games and animated stories.

Research associate Jungyun "JY" Hwang has studied physical activity and nutrition and their effects on cognition and behavior, and the two are focusing on the public-health benefits of keeping children active and healthy, particularly low-income children whose access to sports and outdoor play can be limited by environmental factors.

Before joining the AVG project, Matheson was child nutrition program coordinator at the South End Community Health Center. While teaching at Northwestern University in Chicago, Lu talked to parents and researchers and learned that many parents in poor and crime-plagued neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side feared letting their children play outdoors, leaving children to rely on after-school and in-school physical education for exercise.

Through the AVG project, both Lu and Hwang hope to offer children a year-round, indoor alternative for safe physical activity without concern for the safety of the nearby playground or months of inclement weather. Lu noted that while Chicago is very cold, it doesn't get as much snow as does Boston. "It's six months of snow here," Lu observed. "When the weather is bad outside, where will the kids go?"

The AVG project is funded for five years through the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The project hopes to recruit at least 100 participants, boys and girls aged 8 through 12, for the initial phase of watching and reviewing the introductory stories and characters, by Saturday, October 1, with a scheduled start date of Saturday, October 22 at BCC.

The next phase of the study, in which boys and girls aged 8 through 12 view the finalized introductory stories and play the active video games, is planned to begin in early 2017. Active video game participants will be asked to wear monitors that track their activity in the manner of a FitBit at each of four sessions, and will receive a $10 gift card after completing four sessions of up to an hour. Lu and her team are also in talks with the youth program at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on Shawmut Avenue as a possible AVG project site.

The AVG study seems perfectly suited to the current generation's reliance on digital devices for information, communications and recreation. This reporter, who learned to type on a typewriter, walked into a brave new world in researching this story. On a recent visit to the AVG project office, I was welcomed graciously and promptly challenged to a game of Xbox-assisted tennis. Being a singularly poor tennis player on the court, I had low expectations for my performance in virtual tennis.

However, once Hwang and Matheson patiently guided me in positioning my feet, arm and leg movements to be recognized by the gaming system's sensor, I was able to lob a tennis ball over the net, and won a game against the tall, young and athletic Hwang. My age, lack of practice and short stature did not doom me to failure as they might on an actual tennis court. The technology holds promise for welcoming a wider array of body types and ability levels to enjoyable physical activity.

To learn more on the AVG project, please contact Malcolm Matheson at 617/373-5795 or at AVGstudy@neu.edu. To sign up for the project, please visit tinyurl.com/AVGstudy.