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Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Sexual Harassment Prevention Virtual Reality (VR) Training

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Customer Value Partners (CVP)

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Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Sexual Harassment Prevention Virtual Reality (VR) Training is an immersive VR serious game designed by CVP for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) VHA to transform how healthcare professionals understand, identify, and prevent sexual harassment in VHA facilities. This innovative training solution leverages the power of perspective-taking and empathy-building through realistic scenarios that place users directly into situations where they can experience, recognize, and respond to various forms of sexual harassment.

Core Experience
Through this game, a user transport into meticulously recreated VA medical center environments where they encounter realistic scenarios depicting different forms of sexual harassment. Users navigate these scenarios from multiple perspectives—as victims, bystanders, and potential interveners—creating powerful empathy-building experiences that traditional training methods cannot achieve. The immersive nature of VR allows participants to:
• Experience the emotional impact of harassment firsthand
• Practice intervention techniques in a safe, consequence-free environment
• Develop and test prevention strategies
• Receive immediate feedback on their responses and decisions
• Build confidence in addressing real-world situations

Technical Implementation
CVP built the application using the Unity Pro Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The application runs on multiple VA-approved VR headsets, including the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye, Pico 4E, and Meta Quest 3. The game incorporates advanced features such as:
• Eye-gaze tracking
• Spectator functionality enabling collaborative training experiences
• Optional remote connection to a large language model (LLM) to provide more dynamic dialogue in certain scenes

Learning Methodology
The app employs a research-validated approach that combines:
• Perspective-taking scenarios: Users experience harassment situations from different viewpoints to build genuine empathy
• Skill demonstration: The game showcases effective intervention and prevention techniques
• Practice opportunities: Users actively apply learned skills in progressively challenging scenarios
• Immediate feedback: The system provides real-time guidance on user responses
• Performance assessment: Embedded metrics track user progress toward learning objectives

Customization and Adaptability
The game features modules that address:
• Geographic and regional differences in workplace culture
• Various forms of harassment (verbal, physical, environmental)
• Different workplace settings within VA facilities
• Diverse demographic considerations

Impact and Effectiveness
Field testing across 16 VA medical centers with over 225 employees demonstrated:
• 90%+ satisfaction rating compared to traditional training methods
• 40% reduction in training delivery costs while maintaining or improving educational outcomes
• Significant improvements in participants’ understanding of harassment impacts and prevention strategies
• Enhanced confidence in addressing harassment situations

This serious game represents a transformative approach to addressing workplace harassment by creating meaningful, memorable experiences that drive lasting behavioral change and foster safer, more respectful healthcare environments for both Veterans and VA employees.

Game Overview

The skills and ideas taught throughout the game include:
• Recognition skills: Identifying verbal, physical, and environmental forms of sexual harassment in healthcare settings.
• Empathy development: Understanding the emotional and psychological impact of harassment on victims through first-person perspective experiences.
• Intervention techniques: Practical methods for safely and effectively intervening when witnessing harassment, including direct intervention, distraction techniques, delegation, and documentation.
• Prevention strategies: Proactive approaches to create and maintain harassment-free environments, including proper reporting procedures and policy implementation.
• Bystander response: Effective ways to support victims and address harassment situations as a witness, including appropriate language and actions.
• Situational awareness: Recognizing environmental and behavioral cues that may precede harassment incidents.

Players progress through several learning challenges designed to build harassment prevention skills:
• Master recognition and response: Successfully identify various forms of sexual harassment in different contexts and demonstrate appropriate responses within increasingly challenging scenarios
• Achieve perspective transformation: Experience harassment situations from multiple viewpoints (victim, bystander, supervisor) and demonstrate measurable shifts in empathy and understanding
• Develop intervention confidence: Progress from hesitation to confident action when confronted with harassment situations, measured through response time and decision quality metrics
• Create safe environments: Apply prevention strategies to transform virtual workplace settings from high-risk to harassment-free environments through a series of policy and behavioral decisions.

The training is primarily designed for adult healthcare professionals and staff within the Veterans Health Administration system. The target audience includes clinical providers, administrative personnel, support staff, and leadership across VA medical centers nationwide. The scenarios, language, and learning objectives are calibrated to address the specific challenges and responsibilities of VA employees who interact with Veterans, colleagues, and the public in medical facility environments. The training has been validated with over 225 VA employees across diverse demographics, roles, and experience levels to confirm its relevance and effectiveness.

The training assesses player performance primarily through multi-part questions presented at key moments during the training scenarios. These interactive knowledge checks require players to make decisions about how to respond to harassment situations, with each choice leading to immediate feedback explaining why the selected option was correct or incorrect. Players who select incorrect answers receive an explanation of why their choice was suboptimal and are encouraged to try again, creating a learning-through-failure approach that reinforces proper harassment prevention techniques. Additionally, the team has designed a formal scientific experiment with control and experimental groups to validate the training’s effectiveness, though this experiment has not yet been implemented. The experimental protocol includes pre/post measurements and a 3-month follow-up to assess knowledge retention and real-world application.

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