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.
![What is the Healthy University Initiative? What is the Healthy University Initiative?](/sites/default/files/Human%20Resources/HUI_Workplace-Wellness_graphic_final.jpg)
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:
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/emotional_wellness.png)
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/financial_wellness.png)
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/mental_wellness.png)
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/physical_wellness.png)
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/social_wellness.png)
![](/sites/default/files/wellness/spiritual_wellness.png)
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.