Health and Wellness | National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE)

Student health and wellness encompasses a broad range of physical, mental, and spiritual services, programs, and environments.

Strategic planning for student health and wellness involves a campuswide commitment to integrating health and wellness issues across the campus. The effort requires recognizing and changing environments and practices that threaten wellness, increasing access to quality care, and increasing opportunities for students to make choices that positively affect their well-being. Helping students become or remain physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy is a duty of the safe and supportive learning environment. Strategic planning can ensure that health and wellness issues are considered alongside other institutional goals and objectives.

Planners should define health and wellness broadly.

Strategic planning for health and wellness must include prevention.

National resource are available.

References

Featured Resources

Investing in adolescents: High school climate and organizational context shape student development and educational attainment

Provides evidence on the impact of high schools on the experiences and trajectories of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students, many of whom are members of historically marginalized communities.

Child Sexual Abuse

Informs the reader of indicators of sexual abuse in children in an effort to bring awareness to this crisis.

Cover image of the Addressing Basic Needs Security in Higher Education: An Introduction to Three Evaluations of Supports for Food and Housing at Community Colleges resource

Addressing Basic Needs Security in Higher Education: An Introduction to Three Evaluations of Supports for Food and Housing at Community Colleges

Evaluates three new promising approaches to addressing food and housing insecurity. All three programs were developed by community colleges and their partners based on their local needs, resources, and opportunities.

Callisto: A College Sexual Assault Reporting System

Addresses sensitive issues in sexual health and well-being. Callisto websites provide students with an online forum for recording incidents of sexual assault, accessing more information on school and district specific reporting protocols, and a database that alerts schools when an assailant has assaulted multiple people.

Center for Collegiate Mental Health 2017 Report

Summarizes data contributed to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health during the 2016-2017 academic year, beginning July 1, 2016 and ending on June 30, 2017. De-identified data were contributed by 147 college and university counseling centers, describing 161,014 unique college students seeking mental health treatment, 3,592 clinicians, and 1,255,052 appointments.

Center for Collegiate Mental Health: 2016 Annual Report

Summarizes data contributed to Center for Collegiate Mental Health during the 2015-2016 academic year, closing on June 30, 2016. De-identified data were contributed by 139 college and university counseling centers, describing 150,483 unique college students seeking mental health treatment (a 50% increase over last year); 3,419 clinicians; and over 1,034,510 appointments. The report identifies that the average level of counseling center utilization has grown in the past five years, with anxiety and depression being the top concerns for students seeking counseling.

Higher Education Update: Reducing Risk During the First Few Weeks on Campus

Details what can be done to keep first-year students safe during their first few weeks on campus. Suggests reducing behavioral tendencies that include high-risk alcohol consumption, drug use, hazing, and other behaviors contrary to successful assimilation into college life.

Safe Place: Trauma-Sensitive Practices for Health Centers Serving Students

Encompasses a broad range of material introducing and endorsing trauma-sensitive practice with an emphasis on sexual assault trauma. It is designed specifically for health center staff who serve as primary care providers to students in higher education. These tools are designed to supplement higher education efforts to develop campus-wide plans addressing sexual assault at their institutions.