Serious Games and Participatory Research in Public Health Patty Kostkova Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction University College London United Kingdom p.kostkova@ucl.ac.uk Andreea Molnar Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering Swinburne University of Technology Australia amolnar@swin.edu.au Ann Borda Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre University of Melbourne Australia aborda@unimelb.edu.au ABSTRACT This research provides an overview of serious games and gamification usage to improve public health, as well as the usage of participatory research in health. Furthermore, it provides an opportunity to consider the usage of both participatory research and serious games to improve public health. It discusses the existing research, opportunities and future directions. CCS CONCEPTS Applied computing → Interactive learning environments; Computers in other domains; KEYWORDS Gamification, Participatory Research, Public Health, Serious Games. ACM Reference format: Patty Kostkova, Andreea Molnar and Ann Borda. 2019. Serious Games and Participatory Research in Public Health. In Proceedings of the 9 th Digital Public Health Conference, 20-23 November, Marseilles, France. 5 pages. 1 Introduction Among the grand challenges of digital health recently addressed in the literature [37], the emergence of serious games for health- and game-based learning was identified for its potential as a technology-enabled intervention in the improvement of health and wellbeing of individuals and wider populations. There is no one formalized definition of serious games but it generally refers to digital game technologies that serve a ‘serious’ purpose other than simply entertainment. Among the published clarifications of this remit, Bergeron [4] defines serious games as “interactive computer applications,…” created for the purpose of imparting knowledge or skills, and which incorporate an element of scoring, challenging goals and engaging design. Serious games applications have defined learning outcomes associated with game-based learning (GBL) and digital game- based learning (DGBL) with the potential of improving training activities and initiatives through engagement, motivation, role- playing, and repeatability [2, 44, 56, 63]. One systematic literature review found growing evidence that serious games can have a positive impact on knowledge and skills acquisition, and produce improvements in specific cognitive and perceptual outcomes for learners [7]. Some of the early examples of serious games were used for military training, but there is an exponential rise in the last decade of such games in the healthcare context, especially in the rapid take- up of mobile and smartphone (mHealth) opportunities [18, 30] and increasing technological literacy [5]. A number of literature reviews over the past twenty years have captured the evolving development and integration of serious games in healthcare [10, 24, 67], including using games in hygiene and infection control [1, 21, 48] emergency training [33], and women’s healthcare [71], for example. Serious games have targeted different segments of the populations. Some serious games have concentrated on the general public, such as games aimed to teach children about microbes, hygiene and responsible antibiotic use [21, 48]. Edugames4all MicrobeQuest! [47] is an example of such a game in which the integrated learning objectives are based on the most common learning objectives about microorganism in some of the European countries’ primary school curricula [41]. The St John Ambulance organization in Australia has designed the Action Hero game (www.stjohnvic.com.au/action-hero/) – a mobile game for children aged 5 years+ to learn about first aid. Historically there is a strong foundation in games targeted to the education of healthcare professionals [24]. One example of a serious game in this category is Pulse!!, an immersive virtual learning space where healthcare professionals can practice their clinical skills by dealing with injured patients in situations of bioterrorism or other catastrophes [59]. Sabri et al. [60] describes a study on a serious game designed to train orthopedic surgical procedures to orthopedic surgical residents, and Diehl et al [17] outline a game to teach insulin therapy to primary care physicians. The applied use of serious gaming to clinical and nursing education provides health professionals and student learners with opportunities to participate in active learning, to improve performance (e.g. adherence to standards of care), reduce error, and clinical decision-making without risk to patients, as well as collaborative team learning [1, 23, 24, 26]. So-called games for health are directed largely to a wider public and aim either to promote healthy behaviors or to prevent, diagnose or treat (chronic) diseases. These games, which generally fall