February 26, 2007
The CDC Joins The Virtual World
There is a Virtual Worlds Conference in New York March 28-29, 2007. Unexpected featured speakers at this event include 2 faculty from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One would expect speakers from IBM, Disney, MTV and other media companies, but the CDC?
Apparently, the CDC has joined the virtual world by building a virtual headquarters on two popular Web-based virtual worlds in an effort to inform people about health issues. Since last fall, the CDC has had an outpost in the virtual world called Second Life and also collaborated with a virtual world, called Whyville, where it conducted a campaign for children's avatars to be vaccinated against the "Why-Flu." CDC officials said exploring health education via virtual worlds is simply another strategy to publicize information.
Other government agencies who have invested in landscape in Second Life are the The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and NASA.