Featured Image: Advertisement for Rewards for Healthy Living shows
possible prizes up to $5,000 for playing games. Rhian Tramontana | Marlin Chronicle
A site released by EdLogics, Rewards for Healthy Living, was made to help teach people in the 757 Hampton Roads area about the importance of mental and physical health in a fun way.
The program is now making its way to the Virginia Wesleyan campus. When walking around, students can sometimes see flyers for prizes they could win by engaging with the site.
Kayleigh Poggioli, the assistant to the senior vice president, has been one of the biggest supporters of promoting the site on campus.
“It’s basically a gaming platform that teaches about health literacy. It also provides incentives for individuals who utilize the app,” Poggioli said.
The site covers a wide range of topics pertaining to health.
“It’s really cool because it teaches people about things like mental health. The other day I got an email about symptoms of stroke and what can trigger that,” Poggioli said. ”It’s just really educational but in a way that’s not boring.”
This idea and site has been completely public only since 2020 when the free, community based rewards launched. Before it was mainly a site used by employers.
“The platform began 10 years ago, and it’s been an operational product in the employer setting for at least seven years. The free community based rewards for healthy living platform, though, was launched in early 2020. Because they wanted to ensure that, after the pandemic started, there was credible information about COVID-19 that they could get out to the public,” Poggioli said.
The process of promotion of the site includes prizes which feature the site and school on them as well as events put in place to help make the site more popular on campus.
The promotion process was helped by Poggioli. “We started the rollout process to promote it on campus. So we put things up like posters, we gave out VWU water bottles, we did tabling events, we did stress balls, things like that, that were branded with VWU and Rewards for Healthy Living,” Poggioli said.
The site is slowly catching on as more posters and events get put up for it. “I’ve seen students get really excited about it,” Poggioli said.
The site has already dispatched awards for some students. “I did see some people on campus who already won things like gift cards or donations to the local food bank or like cash prizes. So people on campus are playing it,” Poggioli said.
The more participants play games on the site, the more points and opportunities they have to win prizes. “The more activities you do, the more times you can get entered in to win prizes and cash and stuff like that, which is really cool,” Poggioli said.
The site is built so that accounts fit the individual. A person can have a personal and immersive experience with the site and it fits what they need. “It’s tailored to the individual. When you put in your own information and your health status, it actually will send you information for resources that are unique to your position, and things that you’re interested in learning about,” Poggioli said.
If you’re interested in learning more about your mental health while potentially earning prizes, find the site and sign yourself up at https://www.myedlogics.com/rewards/home.
By Cyril Coefield
ccoefield@vwu.edu