Virtual communities of care: online peer networks with post-organ transplant youth

This paper discusses the Virtual Communities of Care Project that uses a 3D virtual environment, Zora, to support a psycho-educational intervention for pediatric post-organ transplant patients. These patients have difficulties in developing a peer network due to chronic illness, and as a result they are often incompliant to medical and other requirements. Our goals are to examine the extent to which we can leverage youth interest in technologies to develop an intervention to support peer network building and medical adherence. During an eight-week intervention, participants engage in weekly online group and individual activities in Zora. We describe here the intervention and preliminary data to illustrate the objectives of this project.