The University of Central Florida was granted $434,800 by the National Institutes of Health. This money will be used to develop a game with life-size avatars designed to teach sexual abstinence to Latina middle schoolers.
UCF nursing professor Anne Norris and UCF computer science professor Charles Hughes will work with UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training during the next two years on the project. The game is designed to be played in after-school and youth outreach programs run by trained teachers and counselors in order to improve girls skills in responding to peer pressure to engage in sexual behavior.
Our ultimate goal is to reduce pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease among the young Latina population, Norris said.
If successful, a similar sort of game could be developed for boys and other ethnicities.
Source: Orlando Business Journal
