Virtual Tour of Avondale for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Staff

An educational research team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital has developed, implemented, and evaluated a virtual tour of a local impoverished neighborhood (Avondale). The virtual tour utilizes immersive 360 videos, allowing viewers to move freely within the virtual environment, and is organized in a phone/tablet application (app). This educational experience highlights Avondale’s community resources and neighborhood-related barriers to healthy outcomes by intertwining 360 videos of 8 neighborhood sites and interviews with community members (about access to food, transportation, exercise, and housing). Curriculum implementation began in September with first-year residents on their advocacy rotation. Initial results demonstrate non-inferiority to the previous in-person experience in improving residents’ self-assessed ability to provide tailored anticipatory guidance. Residents also reported effective immersion in the virtual environment.

The app in development: Once completed, users can look at a map of tour locations (left image), click on a location for more information (middle image), then take a virtual, 360-degree tour of the location of their choice (images on the right). To see a preview of the 360 tour, watch the video below.

The virtual tour approach offers advantages (compared to the previous in-person experience), including standardized access to more neighborhood locations, inclusion of parents’ voice, and ease of expansion without causing undue burden on community members. Next steps include scaling the virtual tour to providers across the educational continuum to enhance awareness of the daily experiences of their patients living in poverty. Improving clinicians’ understanding of the context in which patients live can ensure provision of more meaningful advice, ultimately improving outcomes.

Experience a virtual tour in the making. Enjoy the expanded view as you can use your Internet browser or smartphone move the screen around 360 degrees as the video plays. You can watch the video in 360° using Google Chrome or Firefox internet browsers on a computer, or through the YouTube app on your smartphone or tablet. As you watch, please move the screen in all directions to appreciate the full field of view.

(Educational research team members: Margot Lazow, MD, Francis J. Real, MD, MEd, Melissa Klein, MD, MEd, Nicholas Ollberding, PhD, David Davis, MFA, Bradley Cruse, MFA)