Serious games as an educational strategy to control childhood obesity: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Objectives:to identify in the literature the efficacy of serious games to improve knowledge for and/or behavioral changes among overweight or obese children. Method:Systematic Literature Review. The Cochrane Systematic Reviews Handbook was used. The studies were collected from the following databases: Public Medline; Web Of Science; Science Direct; Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature; and the Health Game Research and Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature. The descriptors were video games and obesity, while the key word was serious games. Inclusion criteria were: studies classified as Randomized Clinical Trials written in English, Spanish or Portuguese and in which children were the subjects of the study. Results:2,722 studies were identified in the initial search and six studies remained in the final sample. The papers focused on encouraging behavioral changes in players, including physical exercise and improved eating habits. The studies report that serious games are a potential strategy to encourage positive coping with childhood obesity. Conclusion:research in this field is an expanding and promising strategy and serious games represent an alternative means to provide health education to children.

Optimizing Child Nutrition Education With the Foodbot Factory Mobile Health App: Formative Evaluation and Analysis

“…Existing systematic reviews of mHealth dietary interventions for children and adolescents were identified. These studies indicated that nutrition knowledge acquisition, nutrition-related behaviors, and nutrition-related health outcomes improve with mHealth interventions [7,9], and they highlighted the strengths of gamification as a strategy to implement for child nutrition mHealth apps [27,28]. An additional systematic search, conducted by the Foodbot Factory research and development team, focused on identifying other strategies demonstrated to engage children in learning or behavior change through mHealth nutrition apps [10,11,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

Educação e tecnologias digitais em tempos de pandemia: uma experiência, muitos desafios

“…Serious games desenvolvidos pelo GPECCA mentais e promoção de melhores resultados de saúde. (22) Jogos proporcionam aprendizado baseado na experiência, que motiva o estudante, além de alguns possuírem pontuação que exibem o progresso e desempenho do aluno, sendo essa característica atrativa aos nativos digitais. (23) Outros benefícios importantes para a aprendizagem proporcionados pelos games incluem facilidade de acesso à informação desejada, fornecimento de respostas claras a difi culdades e problemas compatíveis com a realidade do aluno, síntese das melhores evidências científi cas e possiblidade de jogar via smartphone ou outros dispositivos móveis.…”

Serious Games and Board Games Versus Cultural Changes

“…Such games can help a player master new moves (Nyberg & Meckbach, 2017) or fulfill some of the daily physical activity recommendations (Polechonski & Mynarski, 2018). • acquiring health knowledge about healthy eating habits in children, preventing childhood obesity (Dias et al, 2018), or supporting good habits among the sick or cancer patients (Thomas et al, 2019). SGs have also been used with people with asthma, though the increase in knowledge was not accompanied by increased motivation for treatment (Drummond & Monnier, 2017).…”