Mobile Technologies for Promoting Health and Wellness among African American Youth

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes an effort to address life-threatening diseases and health conditions through engaging use of mobile devices. The design targeted children ages 7-11, with a goal of becoming aware of the nutritional value of foods that they eat on a regular basis. The implementation efforts resulted in Health Attack, a matching and memory game that seeks to raise the knowledgelevel of participants about the foods that they eat. The evaluation of Health Attack, conducted through a demo and questionnaire administered to K-12 teachers, suggests that this type of game would be engaging for younger audiences as a first step in raising health awareness.

A Study on Internet of Things in Women and Children Healthcare

“…Although the platform is beneficial for children, it lacks suggestion on how to avoid junk foods. Health Attack [14] is a mobile application based on iPhone platform targeting afro-american children who are aged between 7 and 11 years old focused on informing them about nutritional value of diverse food items. There is a total of 7 different nutrients; water, vitamins, fats, proteins, minerals, carbohydrates and fiber.…”

Mobile Technologies and Its Advantages with Promoting Healthy Habits amongst Children

“…Health Attack was not part of the game suite used in the Boys and Girls Club. It pre-dated the other games, and it was targeted towards the African-American community because of the increasing rate of obesity issues, particularly for this community [3]. When the design team developed Health Attack, they wanted to make the target audience children from ages 7-11 because of how influential children are around that age.…”

“…In today's society, there is an alarming number of people, especially children, who have life-threatening diseases and conditions. Several of these diseases and conditions, such as heart disease and obesity, can be "prevented or lessened with a healthy diet and exercise" [3]. In recent years, there have been several initiatives taken to help society live healthier lifestyles.…”

“…In recent years, there have been several initiatives taken to help society live healthier lifestyles. One popular initiative is First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign to fight against childhood obesity [2,3]. The popularity of video games and mobile phones over the years opens a path to help address this epidemic.…”

Leveraging Card-Based Collaborative Activities as Culturally Situated Design Tools

“…We called the game "Health Attack" and targeted it for African American youth. This section of the paper describes Health Attack as a tool for culturally situated design and understanding; for a more complete description of the implementation, use, and evaluation, see [5].…”