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About Us

Mission & Guiding Principles

The UHS Health Promotion Office leads campus-wide health promotion action to advance a culture of well-being, cultivate student flourishing, and positively influence student health.

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Always be Student Centered

Put students at the center of our work, using participatory approaches to engage and amplify their voices.

  • Involve students in all steps of our processes, from assessing needs and collecting data to creating, implementing, and evaluating our programs and services.
  • Identify student strengths and competencies rather than problems and deficits.
  • Consider the whole student, their intersecting identities, and how their cultural filters shape their understanding and quest for health and well-being.

 

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Pursue Ever Better Well-being

Define Meliora through the lens of student flourishing.  

  • Help students develop the skills of awareness, mindfulness, resilience, equanimity, acceptance, and self-compassion.
  • Emphasize community-oriented and compassion-centered care, rather than assuming students have the individual resources necessary for self-care.
  • Create opportunities for students to experience connectedness, belonging, and purpose.
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Prioritize Evidence-Informed Interventions

Prioritize evidence-informed interventions, utilizing UR specific and national data, published research, and best practices.

  • Take part in ongoing data collection through quantitative and qualitative measures to best understand the needs of our students.
  • Disaggregate data sets whenever possible to recognize the various socio-ecological factors which impact access and outcome for individuals with marginalized identities.
  • Engage in continuing exploration of current research and best practices.
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Use Collective Engagement

Be collaborative, with the understanding that this work is far greater than our individual reach.

  • Recognize that cultivating a culture of well-being will be most successful with intentional collaboration.
  • Continually develop and foster cross-sector partnerships with campus colleagues, key stakeholders, and community organizations.
  • Partner with others to jointly plan, coordinate efforts, share information and lessons learned, create a shared vision, and identify new and innovative ways to embed well-being into university systems and settings.
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Think Wholistically 

Use settings and whole-system approaches to embed well-being into campus culture.

  • Investigate how various settings (classrooms, residence halls, student spaces) and systems (policies, social norms, allocation of resources) either help or hinder student flourishing.
  • Move beyond individual level interventions to achieve population and systems level change.
  • Commit to a comprehensive, inclusive, and progressive wellness model of college health promotion.