Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health have secured a grant totaling $1.6 million from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The money will fund a study to determine if collaborative virtual environments designed to improve public health preparedness and response planning really work.
Given the plethora of health-related sites already in Second Life, it's going to be a disappointment for those vested in SL to read their efforts are for naught, should the study's results indicate so, but that's unlikely given the school's existing reliance on virtual environments for training and education.
Nonetheless, UIC researchers will recruit 40 local health departments from across the United States to participate in the study and will use Second Life to train public health workers in emergency preparedness. As in any proper study, half the participants will tap a virtual environment to support their emergency preparedness planning while the other half will use a traditional meeting approach to planning.
In all seriousness, the study appears to have value. Only one percent of public health departments across the country train public health workers for emergency situations by using virtual training environments. Without study's such as UIC's, there will be little motivation on the part of local governments to fund a public health department's transition to a virtual environment for training purposes.
"We believe that using virtual environments will improve collaboration across agencies and jurisdictions, raise awareness about planning for vulnerable populations, increase the realism in the training exercise, allow participants to participate in different scenarios, and allow emergency responders to return to the training exercise at their convenience for ongoing training," said the study's principal investigator Colleen Monahan, who is also director of the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education at the UIC School of Public Health.
With that sort of approach, it looks like the results of the study are a given.
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