About Us

Overview

Your health and wellbeing plays a critical role in your ability to succeed on and off campus. Student Wellness & Health Promotion strives to help students identify positive behaviors and coping strategies related to Emotional Wellbeing, Physical Wellbeing, Interpersonal Violence, and more. Through interacting with our office, programs and peer educators, we feel students will be able to learn life-long strategies for living a healthy lifestyle.

Our Mission

The mission of the Office of Student Wellness & Health Promotion is to foster a culture of wellness that champions an environment focused on the whole person, whole educational experience, and whole institution resulting in shared responsibility for the entire campus.

Purpose Statement

The Office of Student Wellness & Health Promotion seeks to create an environment in which all students can thrive. 

Goals:

1. Create a culture of wellness based on the Social Ecological Model 
2. Develop partnerships within the campus and community to support a culture of wellness on campus.
3. Utilize Peer Education as a primary form of changing or influencing behavior change on campus.
4. Implement evidence-based programs and best practices related to Public Health.

Values:

• Intersectionality: All interventions will encompass specific considerations for marginalized populations, diversity, equity and inclusion. Each day, SWHP staff will strive to create affirming environments for the most vulnerable. We encourage public health practitioners to examine their own implicit bias which can dramatically influence practice and systems. SWHP also recognizes the intersectionality of best practices from the following fields; mental health, gender and sexual violence, substance use as well as secondary and tertiary prevention. SWHP actively seeks guidance and partnership from interdisciplinary experts. 
• Learning of social significance: Always a student remains a departmental value. SWHP staff commit to learning, engaging, and presenting topics which foster practical knowledge and applications. We also believe that peer to peer education is a powerful tool in changing student behavior. We ascertain that students can provide a humbling and enriching learning experience for higher education professionals and vice versa. Therefore, we prioritize mentorship and preceptorship of the next generation of wellness ambassadors.  
• Social Justice: SWHP recognizes that systematic racism and oppression impact the emotional and physical well-being of students of color as well as marginalized communities at disproportionate rates. We acknowledge that successful public health work is rooted in social justice which strives to support health equity for all. 
• Teamwork: Public Health and Higher Education Practitioners are better together. We believe that engaging the very best of our fields result in well rounded practitioners. We operate under the philosophy that we are “public health professionals first” which ensures that we are successful and competent higher administration professionals with a powerful modality to affect change.  
• Assessment: Public Health is the science and art of preventing disease. SWHP develops interventions utilizing the scientific method which promotes well-being sustainability.  Practical application link to empirically validated and evidenced-based sources, climate and trend data, Public Health Theory Methodology as well as the American Public Health Association, American College Health Association, American Psychological Association, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• We develop a curriculum framework based on the nine principles of effective prevention promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and led by well-prepared health promotion professionals. Standards of practice embrace the socio-ecological model which emphasizes all levels of the community – individual, institutional, community, and policy levels – and suggests that the work of prevention and health promotion resides primarily in population-level strategies.
  • Comprehensive: Strategies should include multiple components and affect multiple settings to address a wide range of risk and protective factors of the target problem. 
  • Varied Teaching Methods: Strategies should include multiple teaching methods, including some type of active, skills-based component. 
  • Sufficient Dosage: Participants need to be exposed to enough of the activity for it to have an effect. 
  • Theory Driven: Preventive strategies should have a scientific justification or logical rationale. 
  • Positive Relationships: Programs should foster strong, stable, positive relationships between children and adults. 
  • Appropriately Timed: Program activities should happen at a time (developmentally) that can have maximal impact in a participant’s life. 
  • Socio-Culturally Relevant: Programs should be tailored to fit within cultural beliefs and practices of specific groups as well as local community norms. 
  • Outcome Evaluation: A systematic outcome evaluation is necessary to determine whether a program or strategy worked. 
  • Well-Trained Staff: Programs need to be implemented by staff members who are sensitive, competent, and have received sufficient training, support, and supervision 

Our Team!

READ OUR 2021-2022 IMPACT REPORT HIGHLIGHTS!

READ OUR 2020-2021 IMPACT REPORT HIGHLIGHTS!

Last updated: 5/5/2023