Tuesday, 11 July 2023 was a happy day for Tegar Septyan Hidayat. His hard work for 5 (five) years finally paid off. Through a game developed to encourage healthy living behavior, Tegar officially earned his Doctorate in Public Health Sciences. Tegar is the 374th Doctor who was born at the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) Universitas Indonesia (UI).
His dissertation stems from a sensitivity to the existence of a window of opportunity for the younger generation, especially university students, in holistic health promotion programs from an early age. Particularly in terms of physical activity, vegetable and fruit consumption, sleep quality, and mental health. This program requires optimizing the role of technology due to the characteristics of students who are technologically literate or tech-savvy.
There are three stages in this research, namely Identification, Design, and Execution-Evaluation (IDE). User identification in the initial phase, followed by a design phase which contains the development of digital prototypes that are tested in the next phase. In the evaluation phase, testing was carried out through a randomized-based experimental study which was divided into 2 (two) groups, namely the intervention group that received gameful metaverse direct intervention and the non-intervention group, for a period of 5 (five) weeks.
As a result, the GAR (Game as Reality)-verse developed by Tegar was able to drive changes in an average healthy lifestyle in all aspects of outcome by 12.7% (p-value <0.05) over a period of five weeks. For all outcomes there were significant changes between the intervention group and the control group. These changes occurred 15.4% in physical activity (p-value <0.05), 16.7% for sleep quality (p-value <0.05), 10.4% for total vegetable and fruit consumption (p-value <0.05), and 16% for happiness levels (p-value <0.05).
The product developed by Tegar was welcomed by the entire Board of Testers consisting of Dr. dr. Tris Eryando, M.A., as Head of the Examining Team; Prof. Dr. drg. Wahyu Sulistiadi, M.A.R.S., as chairman of the session; Dr. dr. Ermita Isfandiary Ibrahim; Dr. dr. Harimat Hendarwan, M. Kes.; Dr. dr. Leonardo Lubis, M. Kes., and Dr. Ir. Heru Purnomo, M.Eng., as the examiner team; Prof. dr. Kemal N. Siregar, S.K.M., M.A., Ph.D., as promoter; and Dr. dr. Dhanasari Vidiawati Sanyoto, Sp.DLP., M.Sc.CM., FISPH., FISCM., and Dr. dr. Rita Damayanti, MSPH., as the co-promoter. Doctor Dhanasari even hopes that this GAR-verse can be immediately implemented and disseminated to students.
“Continue to the next stage, downstream it into a product that can be used properly. The community needs a personal and comprehensive health program,” said Prof. Kemal in his congratulatory speech.
During his time as a Research Student in Public Health Sciences at FPH UI, Tegar managed to publish 6 (six) of his writings. He achieved this achievement while being a Masters student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For his achievements, Dr. Tegar graduated with a GPA of 3.91 with a Very Satisfying predicate. (BK)
