Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., is a leading researcher and designer of digital games for learning and health behavior change. She teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also directs the Health Games Research national program, aimed at advancing the research, design, and effectiveness of digital games for health.
Debra consults for health organizations, education agencies, and media and technology companies to help design and evaluate media for entertainment, learning, and health behavior change, for people of all ages. She has contributed to the development of games that have significantly motivated and supported players’ healthy lifestyles, self-care behaviors in a variety of health areas, health-related self-concepts and skills, and academic and problem-solving skills. Her clients have included Apple, Disney, HopeLab, Kaiser Permanente, Knowledge Adventure, Konami, The Learning Company, Philips Medical Systems, Pixar, WebTV, WestEd, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Zowie Intertainment, and many others.
As director of Health Games Research http://www.healthgamesresearch.org, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, Debra and her staff guide 21 research projects nationwide that are investigating processes and effects of playing health games and are discovering fundamental principles of game design that can be used in the creation of future health games. These projects are breaking new ground in game genres, technologies, and behavioral health strategies.
Debra is on the advisory board of Hollywood, Health & Society — an organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the CDC, and other private and federal agencies — that gives entertainment industry professionals accurate and timely information for health storylines, and she is on the editorial board for the journals Computers in Entertainment, and Games and Culture. She is currently co-editing Serious Games for Diabetes, Obesity, and Healthy Lifestyle, which is a special issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. Prior to working at UC Santa Barbara, Debra was vice president of research at Click Health and other companies that developed health games and telehealth systems, and before that she was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington. She holds an Ed.M. in Media and Learning from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she worked with Sesame Street researchers and producers to develop children’s television series, and she holds a Ph.D. (1986) in Communication Research from Stanford University.
Follow Debra on Twitter: @DebLieberman
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