KC Spotlight - Wellness & Health Promotion

The word survival often comes to mind when student affairs professionals review the risks that students take and the remarkable fact that students survive, rebuild and continue towards thriving and academic success.  Most institutions place the programs of risk reduction, bystander intervention and social norming within the department of wellness and health promotion.  Meanwhile the office of the dean of students is witness to the fact that a student or many students are caught in a struggle to survive physically, mentally and socially.  Many of us marvel at the fact that students take enormous risks or are exposed to risks and graduate with a wonderful future ahead of them. 

With this in mind, the emerging wellness and health promotion model is turning to models of wellness coaching which engage the individual student or small groups of students that are focused on skill development which lead to better survival skills.  This model is best implemented by certified wellness coaches who address one, some or all of the wellness components:  Social, physical, intellectual, emotional, financial, spiritual, occupational and environmental.  The students who engage in wellness coaching set their goals and hold themselves accountable for progress towards each goal.  Wellness coaching deals with risk reduction, addressing social norms and being a part of those who support one another (bystander intervention).  It is holistic and universal in its approach, not limited to fitness and nutrition, but rather addresses stress reduction in all areas while building the individual/group to succeed.

Mary Alice Serafini currently serves as the KC Coordinator for Wellness and Health Promotion for NASPA Region IV-West.  She can be reached at [email protected].