THUNDER BAY - Health and wellness goes well beyond a check-up at the doctor, eating right, or exercising. It involves all aspects of our lives, from the buildings we work in, to the people we are surrounded by, and Lakehead University is committing to making every aspect of its campus promote health and wellness for students, staff, and faculty.
“We feel good that the university has taken this initiative that not only includes health as an aspect of a wellness strategy, but as well as other aspects that make a person well, from buildings to everything,” said Harleen Bhullar, a peer wellness educator with the Student Health and Wellness Centre at Lakehead.
On Wednesday, Lakehead University president, Moira McPherson, signed the Okanagan Charter.
The charter was created in 2015 during the International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges and it calls on post-secondary institutions to embed health and wellness into all aspects of campus life.
Andrea Tarsitano, vice provost students and registrar at Lakehead, said signing the Okanagan Charter signals the university’s commitment to a healthy campus for everyone.
“From here we will launch into the development of a wellness strategy,” she said. “We have a new wellness advisory committee that has just been struck and this is the beginning of that process.”
The advisory committee will look at health and wellness policies for the university by seeking input from students, faculty, and staff.
“As part of the committee’s work, we will be engaging with all of the university stakeholders to best understand the needs of students, faculty, and staff and from there we will develop specific strategies,” Tarsitano said. “Going into this process, we will better understand our students and if there are unmet needs and how to best address those so we are providing them with the support they need.”
Lakehead already has comprehensive supports in place, Tarsitano said, including on-campus doctors and counsellors through the Student Health and Wellness Centre and Indigenous elders through Aboriginal Cultural and Support Services.
“We do have a lot of supports and services in place already,” she said. “But through the strategy we may identify additional needs.”
“I think there is always room for improvement,” Bhullar added. “As they are implementing this new strategy, I’m pretty sure there is going to be more areas that Lakehead University could improve on.”
Bhullar said she hopes students will get involved in the new strategies and have their voices heard, because health and wellness are impacted by every aspect of campus life.
“With wellness, a lot has to do with mental health,” she said. “If there is a nice structure of a building, if there is nice layout in offices of the university and classrooms, how approachable professors are.”
“The university takes some initiatives with food bank and those areas, I think everything accumulates into this bundle that helps students relax. We have a lot of students from different cities, and provinces, and internationally, I think all these things contribute to student wellness and mental health.”
