KPU’s Academic Plan 2018 commits to a healthy and positive working and learning environment. Specifically, a key priority for KPU is to create a campus culture that fosters health and well-being by embedding health promotion into programs, practices and polices across our interconnected community of students, staff and faculty.
The Healthy University Initiative (HUI) embodies the comprehensive health strategy that will bring this priority to action, while focusing on the following 3 key goals:
- Increase awareness of health and wellness throughout the KPU community;
- Foster individual and organizational resilience*; and
- Encourage the development of a supportive, inclusive campus environment.
*Organizational resilience is the ability of the organization to bounce back from difficult experiences.
With these goals at the forefront of HUI, two working groups have been established: Student Working Group, and Employee Working Group. These groups have been tasked with developing and implementing a health and wellness action plan under the Healthy University Framework, our guiding foundation that pledges to:
- Build on strengths and revise approaches over time;
- Adopt a comprehensive, campus-wide participatory approach;
- Review and revise institutional structure: organization, planning and policy;
- Support the understanding of self-management competencies and coping skills; and
- Use evidence-informed action and innovation strategies.
Defining health is a personal matter. As such, KPU has decided to adopt the following World Health Organization’s widely-accepted definitions as a starting point for launching its Healthy University Initiative:
Health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
To ensure personal and educational success, KPU’s health + wellness initiatives will channel these definitions and focus on the following six dimensions of health:
The Healthy University Initiative will continue to engage broad, meaningful conversation with students, faculty and staff, to help determine direction and strategy in the development of multi-faceted health + wellness initiatives.