HopeLabs' playful approach to overcoming childhood obesity

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>> Nicole Guthrie: -- Go, and you'll be able to set up your own app inaudible. I'm Nicole Guthrie assumed spelling, and I work at HopeLab as a researcher. And I also have a background in nutrition. And currently I play a significant role in the development of a new product called gDitty for HopeLab, which promotes physical activity in young people.

Music HopeLab was founded on our work in cancer, developing a videogame called "Remission" for young people going through treatment for cancer. And since completing that video game, we have expanded our areas to obesity, major depressive disorder, autism, and sickle cell. I just wanted to touch base with you on getting the devices ready.

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Speaker: Okay.

>> Nicole Guthrie: The original idea for gDitty was that it would be a physical activity monitor that they actually could listen to music on, and that is where the name came from as well, for G, for G-force, or movement, how you measure accelerometery or movement in space, and then ditty for little song. The target age group of gDitty, 11 to 14 years old, middle school, is a very big transition period for young people. It's often a time where you see in the data, there's a significant drop off of physical activity, where play starts to become standing around at recess just talking.

Music gDitty will tell you at the website how many minutes you spend in the zone. And the zone is moderate to vigorous physical activity. And so kids can see how many minutes they have in the zone, and with that, then they earn points. And with their points, they can spend them to customize their website, or they can spend them on gift cards like Target or Amazon.com, or even donation to causes, which is great to see the young people do that. So with gDitty, we want to give them a way to show them how they can be active. They can do anything they want. It doesn't have to be athletics. It can be dancing. It could just be out walking the dog, and then they realize, "Wow, that's good for me?" And so we want to be able to peak that and help them find their joy in that. In the United States since the 1980s, obesity's almost tripled in this age group, 11 to 14 year olds. And so with gDitty promoting physical activity, we know this is one way that we can have an impact to actually help improve their health and prevent even more obesity down the line.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====