$225K Federal Grant to Nyack Company For Sex Assault Prevention App

NYACK, NY – Happy People Games, LLC of Nyack has been awarded a $225,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant to research and develop a sexual assault prevention app. The company will collaborate with university and community college students. The name of the app: Make a Change.

"We will research it throughout development and then post-development with University and Community College students," said Sharon Wood, manager and co-founder of Happy People Games, LLC. in a press release. "We are including community colleges as there are virtually no sexual assault prevention programs that have been developed or tested for community college students, a large, high-risk and under-resourced population."

The grant comes through the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

“The federal funding announced today will support a critical initiative to address the urgent problem of sexual assault on college campuses,” Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY17/Rockland-Westchester) said in a press release. “I am pleased that NIH is providing federal support to innovative New York businesses, and I will continue to advocate for more of these funds in Congress.”

The NIH SBIR program provides grants to early stage small businesses that are looking to research, develop, and commercialize innovative biomedical technologies.

“The NIH/NICHD is funding Happy People Games, LLC to research and develop a college-version app, 'Make A Change,'” Wood said. “Our multidisciplinary team represents theoretically-grounded and well-supported models of health behavior change, games behavior theories and game design, and empirically-based individual-, peer-, and community-level risk and protective factors for sexual assault perpetration and victimization... I appreciate Congresswoman Lowey’s support.”