Policy Games: Designing Interventions on Structural Determinants – Health Equity

Background Policy games can frame in silico interventions in public health. This study aims to map the WHO’s action framework for health equity, supported by social science theories, onto game components related to non-player characters in digital policy games. Embedded in social system theories, the WHO policy framework provides a robust knowledge base for designing policy games, highlighting the overarching problem and the social issues involved. Method Conceptual mapping is used to translate systems and agency challenges related to health equity into game components. Results Social system theories, with clarified subjective agency, are successfully used to map the WHO’s action framework to game components suitable for designing policy games aiming to improve health equity and how social determinants of health emerge and persist. Conclusion This study shows how a solid knowledge base can support the design and theoretical foundation of interventions in policy games addressing health equity. It focuses on configuring the game system and actions of non-player characters. This approach contributes to strengthening the development of non-character players in digital policy games and paves the way for future use of such games to explore and investigate how the structural determinants of health might be created, maintained, and disrupted, as well as revealing the unintended effects of interventions in simulated environments.