Award Description:

The pre-eminent International Health & Medical Media Awards, known as the FREDDIE Awards, celebrates it's 34th annual competition to encourage and recognize excellence in health-related documentaries, series, shorts, videos, Websites, DVDs and CD-ROMs from around the world.

Puff City description

Puff City teaser (30 sec)

Puff City overview (15 min)

Project Description:
The multi-session, tailored, Web-based program, called Puff City, is designed to improve the health of urban, minority teenagers with asthma, thereby reducing the racial disparities in asthma morbidity and mortality. Asthma is the most common crippling disease of children in the United States. Its prevalence is highest among African Americans in urban, low-income areas.

The hip DJ, Puffman, gives scientifically sound advice that is individually tailored to each student's asthma condition. The Pink Panther-esque animation, professional character voices, and street-wise dialog make a very serious, but often dry, public health issue come alive for teens. Behind the scenes, a sophisticated "tailoring engine" evaluates an array of student answers and formulates appropriate health messages, graphics, animations, and voice-overs to play.