Health Games Kenya – Healthy Lifestyles for Non-Communicable Diseases

JSI through its inSupply project based in Nairobi, Kenya, has developed social, virtual games that enable and extend the reach of accurate healthy lifestyle information to 5,000 young people and health professionals across Kenya and elsewhere. Gaming is an interactive, fun and habit-forming approach that motivates users to stay engaged and the games are creating awareness on sexual and reproductive health, non-communicable diseases, and other health topics.

A 2017 pilot of Health Games provided youth with a credible and friendly source of health information to help reduce adverse health outcomes by changing behaviours. Over 1000 youth between 15 – 24 years across 10 tertiary institutions in Kenya answered 240,843 questions on the Your Choice! Your Future! game and the Building Healthy Lifestyles game. The games empowered the youth, improved their agency, and increased their knowledge index by 70% and 64%, respectively.

By tapping into our youth and professional networks, the inititaive has improved gamifying knowledge acquisition and is generating analytics for individual and group continuous learning.