By Malcolm Embree
In December of this year the campus Health Services established a health promotion advisory committee made up of ten students to further understand the health needs of the student body. Largely made up by students in health service programs such as nursing, the committee has also started to gain members from other programs.
The advisory committee is geared towards understanding how students want the various health services promoted around campus. The Health Services found that when they started initiatives based around campus concerns that some students were unaware of them. The advisory board was stemmed from a fourth year nursing students community project.
“Sometimes I wonder if we have a good grasp of what students want and how they want a program delivered to them,” said Sandra McCormick, Health Services manager. “We found that around the college students will say ‘Why don’t you try this?’ and then we don’t get the coverage that we wanted.”
The health promotion advisory committee is currently made up of around 10 students who have met three times since December. The committee also includes students from trades programs, an area which McCormick believes can be underestimated.
“They even challenged me,” said McCormick, the committee challenged McCormick to get more involved in social media in order to better connect with younger students, which McCormick thinks helped.
The committee is also interested in seeing if different programs possibly have different health service needs. Although relatively new, the committee envisions meeting three times a year to coordinate the promotion of different health service initiatives around campus.