Supporting Social Inclusion for Children with Hemophilia by Video Gaming

Hemophilia poses a paradox: if physical activity is recommended for children with hemophilia for the sake of their health and to promote social inclusion, teachers, peers and sometimes parents are reluctant to involve them in physical activity at school. To support physical activity and sports for children with hemophilia, we created a video game called "HEMO-GAME" (https://hemogame.itch.io/play). This paper is aiming to present a quasi-experimental study to assess if the use of this video game has impacts on social inclusion for children with hemophilia. To assess social inclusion of twelve children with hemophilia recruited in this pilot study, two complementary tools have been used: The Playground Observation of Peer Engagement scale (POPE) and the coding social network centrality scale. Results show that successful initiations and positives responses for the child with hemophilia increase significantly in the classrooms where our video game HEMO-GAME has been used, while these indicators remain stable for the child with hemophilia in the classrooms where no specific educational intervention has been introduced. Moreover, social network centrality has two different ways: In the classrooms where our video game HEMO-GAME has been used, the child with hemophilia is more and more connected with his peers; In the classrooms where no specific educational intervention have been introduced, the child with hemophilia has always peripheral and moderate connections with his peers. Finally, the main objective of our work is to influence the mental representation of parents, peers and teachers regarding the importance of physical activity and sports at school for hemophiliacs by using a specific video game, to support social inclusion of children with specific needs. So the use of our video game called HEMO-GAME seems to have positive and significant impact on social interactions between children with hemophilia and their peers.