Thanks to a research grant of $3.9 million from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Yale University will create a videogame designed to teach youngsters how to best avoid being infected by the HIV virus.

The grant will be distributed over the course of five years and enable the project, which will be led by Yale School of Medicine Assistant Professor of Medicine Lynn Fiellin M.D. Titled Retro-Warriors, the game will be created with different cultures in mind, in order to spread its message to adolescents around the globe.

The game’s main goal is stated as “teaching minority adolescents sex, drug and alcohol negotiation and refusal skills.” It’s proposed that instead of just preaching about things that could lead to catching HIV, the game would contain a role-playing aspect enabling those using it to participate in and learn from such risky behaviors.

Fiellin stated:

Access to the Internet is growing in developing countries and these technologies could be transferred to adolescents in countries experiencing a growing HIV epidemic but which have limited access to targeted risk-reduction strategies.

Upon completion the game will be subjected to a clinical trial in a New Haven, Connecticut community center.

Via Kotaku, Thanks Andrew!

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