Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Oct 29, 2024
Date Accepted: Aug 13, 2026
Effects of the Virtual Interactive System (People’s War Against Pandemic) in the emergency preparedness of major emerging infectious diseases in adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
The epidemic situation of major emerging infectious diseases (MEIDs) continues to be severe. It requires each country and region to be vigilant, strengthen cooperation, and take effective prevention and response measures. This highlights the adolescents' demand for education on health and safety measures. Virtual interactive systems have been playing a critical role in many fields. Consequently, we designed and developed a virtual interactive system (People’s War Against Pandemic) aimed at training the adolescents in responding to MEIDs outbreaks. This study amied to explore the effect of the virtual interactive system.
Objective:
To tested the effectiveness of the virtual interactive system in improving the emergency preparedness of MEIDs among adolescents.
Methods:
A randomized controlled trial was conducted in a secondary vocational school from October 2023 to December 2023 in Luzhou, Sichuan. A total of 120 adolescents were recruited through on-site recruitment. They were randomly assigned into the intervention group (n = 60) and the control (n = 60). The intervention group was trained using a virtual interactive system and traditional lectures, while the control group was only given traditional lectures. Self-reported questionnaires with emergency preparedness for MEIDs, infectious disease health literacy were used to evaluate the effect of this virtual interactive system pre and post the intervention. Repeated measures analysis of variance was employed to scrutinize the variations in outcome indicators across various time points for each group.
Results:
The results showed that the emergency preparedness and the infectious disease health literacy scores of the control group and the intervention group were both improved. Additionally, the emergency preparedness and the infectious disease health literacy scores in the intervention group were better than those in the control group (p < 0.001). A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed the presence of a group effect, a time effect, and an interaction effect between the two groups concerning their emergency preparedness and the infectious disease health literacy scores.
Conclusions:
The virtual interactive system was effective in improving adolescents’ decision-making ability, emergency response ability and awareness of following public health guidance in the face of MEIDs. Clinical Trial: ChiCTR2200060919
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