White House Launches Apps for Healthy Kids Development Contest

At this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy analyst Kumar Garg announced the Apps for Healthy Kids game development challenge promoting healthy lifestyle changes in young adults. Part of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign to end childhood obesity, the Apps for Healthy Kids competition "challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging tools and games that drive children, especially 'tweens' (ages 9-12) -- directly or through their parents -- to eat better and be more physically active." Tools and games built for the contest may use the United States Department of Agriculture's nutrition dataset recently released for public use through the Open Government Initiative. The USDA's dataset provides caloric and fat content information for over 1,000 common food items. Developers have until June 30th, 2010, to submit a complete game or application for consideration in the contest. Entries will be judged by a panel of games industry experts and government officials between July 14th and August 14th. $40,000 in cash prizes will be awarded for winning entries in the contest's "tools" and "games" categories. Grand prize winners in each category will receive a top prize of $10,000, with additional awards reserved for runner-ups, honorable mentions, and popular choice titles. A complete list of rules can be found at the Apps for Healthy Kids official website.