About
The SFU Health Promotion team is a team of skilled public health and well-being professionals, with experience in leading campus wide efforts to improve student well-being. SFU Health Promotion took a leadership role in the development of The Okanagan Charter, which is now internationally recognized and endorsed by hundreds of institutions across 40 countries. Connect now
The Healthy Campus Community Initiative contributes directly to What’s Next: the SFU Strategy by promoting and protecting student mental health & well-being. This work also contributes directly to Health & Counselling’s Student Mental Health & Well-being Framework, and Health Promotion’s Strategic Plan:
Vision
Health equity, mental health, and student well-being are valued, prioritized, and advanced through all policies, practices, spaces, and programming at SFU.
Mission
Health Promotion leads and facilitates systemic action to create healthy settings, enhance health equity and build community capacity for student mental health and well-being at SFU.
Guiding Principles
Holistic conceptualizations of health and well-being: We create space for learning with and from knowledge-informed, culturally inclusive practices that encompass various experiences, perspectives, identities, and understandings of health & well-being.
Relationship building: Partnerships are central to health promotion and through collective, relational action, we can create a healthy campus community.
Student voice: We hold students’ needs and goals at the heart of our decision making and center student voice in the design of programs and initiatives.
Systemic action: Comprehensive and systemic action is needed to embed well-being across the institution, including individual and organizational levels and the academic mandate.
Building on strengths: An asset-based approach seeks and expands exemplary actions and activities that are creating conditions for well-being, while highlighting and celebrating shared progress.
Equity and justice: Principles of social justice, accessibility, cultural safety and equity are woven in all health promotion action to help reduce health disparities and contribute to justice. We approach our work through anti-oppressive, anti-racist, trauma-informed, healing-centered and socio-ecological lenses.
Decolonization, reconciliation and Indigenization: We are committed to advancing reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization through our practices and programs. We acknowledge that we operate within a colonial institution and system that cause substantial harm to Indigenous peoples. We acknowledge the responsibility we each have individually and collectively to advance decolonization, equity and justice.
Evidence-informed and reflexive practice: We are committed to continual learning, reflexive practice, innovation and growth. Diverse research, evidence, evaluation, lived experience, and various sources of knowledge are drawn upon to inform strategies.
Ecological and social sustainability: We recognize that the health and well-being of communities, living beings, and the planet are interconnected. The One Health approach is reflected in all health promotion activities, and we take seriously our individual and collective responsibility to our communities and planet.
“We must focus on the well-being of all those who learn and work at SFU.”
(What’s Next: the SFU Strategy p.6)
SFU’s Healthy Campus Community initiative
A Healthy Campus Community is one where the people, processes, and spaces contribute to well-being and success for all. It's in the words spoken, decisions made, actions taken, and culture and systems created.
Read the background on SFU’s Healthy Campus Community initiative