School of Education

Bone and Joint Health Project

Investing in your bones and joints: supporting lifelong health and performance

An ageing population has seen a rapidly rising incidence of osteoporosis, with an estimated 200 million people globally and 924,000 Australians living with the disease, has highlighted an opportunity for much-needed preventative health education to improve bone and joint health. Although primarily a geriatric disease, osteoporosis – a disease characterised by low bone mass density leading to skeletal fragility and increased fracture risk – is shaped in part by paediatric lifestyles.

There is scant knowledge and training available for students, parents, and teachers surrounding bone and joint literacy, however, there is a recognised need for more engaging and contemporary, digitally immersive resources. A recent review of the literature by Edith Cowan University (ECU) academics, has identified that there is a distinct lack of resources that are pedagogically-sound, curriculum-aligned, and furthermore few are interactive and engaging for school students.

Research Project

The Bone and Joint Health Project of Western Australia is a collaboration between ECU, its funding partner Arthritis and Osteoporosis WA Foundation (AOWA) and Singular Health Group (SHG), to design, implement and evaluate pedagogically-sound, curriculum-aligned, digitally immersive educational resources to improve bone and joint health awareness and initiatives amongst youth. This partnership provides a valuable opportunity to improve awareness and knowledge of bone and joint health in order to reduce the risk of developing health conditions, such as osteoporosis, osteopenia and arthritis; a long-term goal of this project.

This project is being conducted by ECU’s Simulation and Immersive Digital Technology Group who will undertake the formative research, intervention design, data collection and analysis, and report on the impact and efficacy of the digital resources.

The project aims are:

1. Describe the digital software and resources that children, educators, parents/ carers, and those engaged with sporting associations currently use to learn about bone and joint health.
2. Develop age-appropriate curriculum aligned resources that are feasible and are motivating for users to implement in schools and sporting clubs.

3. Increase awareness, knowledge, and motivation to address the importance of bone and joint health for primary and secondary school students and children and their families participating in sport.

The approach used in this project centres on co-design with all groups of end-users, whereby understanding and collaborating to design and promote bone and joint health literacy resources, will enable educators, parents, community/ child nurses, health professionals and sporting associations, to use the resources most effectively.

To better understand the type of resources that might be most useful and effective, the research team have engaged with an advisory stakeholder group and are currently recruiting educators, coaches, and health professionals to participate in a voluntary survey. The results will help to inform and guide the future design, development, and uptake of pedagogically sound, digitally immersive educational tools about the importance of healthy bones and joints in children.

A serious game is to be developed as the activation point for learning. SHG will use digital and augmented technology to develop engaging professional teaching and learning resources, to be used in conjunction with this game. SHG’s Health Academy platform will be used to distribute the learning resources to an audience on a global scale.

The ECU research team will undertake to test and evaluate these prototypes in a formal research trial, among interested Western Australian schools and sporting clubs.

Teaching and Learning Resources for Educators

A Teaching and Learning Resource package will be developed to accompany the serious game and digitally immersive learning resources surrounding bone and joint health literacy. These resources will be curriculum-aligned to address content in the Australian Curriculum.

Project Duration

September 2022 – December 2024

Funding Agencies / Collaboration

Arthritis and Osteoporosis WA

Singular Health Group

Edith Cowan University

Research Team

Professor Amanda Devine, Chief Investigator
Dr Julie Boston, Chief Investigator
Mrs Margaret Miller
Professor Richard Prince, AOWA
Mr Ric Forlano, AOWA
Dr Guan Tay, SHG
Dr Martina Mariano, SHG
Mr James Hill, SHG

Project Officer

Ms Sophie Glasfurd

ECU Development Team

Ms Jess Watson
Mr Sean Cashman

Related projects

• Meningococcal Infection, Awareness, Prevention and Protection (MIApp) – Improving and evaluating adolescent access to meningococcal education through the use of an app
• Farm to Fork: A transformational video game to educate students about the health, economic, scientific, and social realities of food production systems.
• ECU’s Digital Immersive Technology projects

For more information, please contact:

Dr Julie Boston, School of Education or Professor Amanda Devine, School of Medical and Health Sciences.