In collaboration with our international partners, we discover and report on actionable information for health-related decision making.
Projects
Evaluating the quality of evidence for gaming disorder: How well do claims about gaming disorder associations with mental health problems match the actual evidence? This overview of systematic reviews used strict methods to identify the strength of evidence in systematic reviews of gaming disorder and associations with depression and anxiety. Bias in these reviews suggests that claims of links between gaming disorder and depression/anxiety are not supported by strong evidence.
Commercial video games as therapy (CGTx): Video games can have significant and unexpected benefits for mental health. We examined studies that show how commercial games can be useful as therapeutic or preventive interventions and suggest a framework to understand and evaluate CGTx. Dr. Colder Carras also acts as an expert consultant in this area for Capvision and GLG.
Suicide prevention through video games and gaming communities: Video games and social media provide users with ways to connect socially and can offer relief for temporary feelings of being overwhelmed or drug/alcohol cravings. In this project we evaluate and share evidence and practice for the use of video games and social media for suicide prevention and crisis intervention. 
Suicide prevention through video games and gaming communities by Michelle Colder Carras, April Foreman, Mathew David Bergendahl, Beau Pinkham, Raffael Boccamazzo, and Kelli Dunlap is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Global preparedness against COVID-19: We must leverage the power of digital health: As part of a team of international experts, we helped identify many opportunities to use digital health for health promotion, intervention and treatment, especially in lower- and middle-income countries.
Products
COVID Action Info Guide: As part of a team of Johns Hopkins experts, we contributed living web content to curate and condense actionable health-related information.
COVID knowledgebase: At the beginning of the pandemic, ensuring public understanding of changing information and recommendations was key. We developed a simple, shareable process and targeted toward the general public that allows developers and health researchers to promote transparent dissemination of changing recommendations. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Expertise
- Digital therapeutics
- Commercial video games as therapy (CGTx)
- Video games: Evidence and policy
- Public health informatics
- Health services research
- Anesthesia practice & education
- Business consulting
- Occupational therapy consulting and claims
Our expertise has reached global audiences with presentations in Geneva, Tokyo, Haifa, Cologne, London, Utrecht, and Seattle.