Wellness Promotion Courses in University Settings: A Review of the Outcome Research

Abstract

Background: Improving college student wellness continues to be a challenge due to concerns related to lifestyle, unhealthy behavior, and lack of accessible supports, often resulting in poor academic performance and high drop-out rates. As a result there has been an increase in wellness-promoting academic courses across colleges and universities with the goal of helping students to establish healthy lifestyle behaviors.Aim: This article critically reviews the existing literature related to college courses designed to promote student wellness.Methods: This scoping review examines research related to courses designed to improve wellness within the college student population between the years 2000-2017 using multiple electronic databases. Results: Review findings include a lack of rigorous research designs, lack of integration of evidence-based models of wellness, challenges associated with consensus conceptualizations of wellness, fidelity, and replicability of wellness-related courses.Conclusions: Wellness as an emerging paradigm continues to gain attention in the literature, particularly related to college students. However, there is a need for more rigorous study designs, examination of mechanisms of change, and consensus related to conceptualizations of wellness and component definitions to inform wellness-promotion efforts, and ultimately support health-enhancing change within the existing lifestyle culture on college campuses.

Teaching the Whole Student: Integrating Wellness Education into the Academic Classroom

“…Informed by the scholarly activities of their reading, writing, research, presentations, and class discussion, and inspired by experiential learning in lecture and lab, students developed wellness habits that promote and enrich physical and mental health, stress resilience, and a positive transition to college. These findings are consistent with observations from other classroom-based wellness interventions (for a review see, Beauchemin et al, 2018), which have noted improved knowledge of wellness concepts (McCormick & Lockwood, 2006;Wolfe & Moran, 2017), improved awareness of nutrition (Choate & Smith, 2003;Lockwood & Wohl, 2012), and improved sleep habits (Caldwell, Harrison, Adams, Quin, & Greeson, 2010), among other outcomes.…”

“…While more such co-curricular resources are valuable and needed, they can be further complemented by support for students within the curriculum, particularly in the realm of wellness education. Knowledge of coping skills and self-care can be critical to academic success, and, in recent years, a growing number of credit-bearing college courses have aimed to provide students with practical knowledge and skills related to health and wellness (Beauchemin, Gibbs, & Granello, 2018;Choate & Smith, 2003). For instance, a psychology professor at Yale University recently developed a course on happiness.…”

College student sleep quality and mental and physical health are associated with food insecurity in a multi-campus study

“…College is often an experience of new-found autonomy for many students, resulting in lifestyle behaviours changes (1,2) and increases in poor mental health for incoming students (3) . Poor mental and physical health can impact college students' success through poor academic performance and high attrition rates (4,5,6,7) . Regarding student well-being, sleep is often impacted upon entering college (8) , where between 40 and 65 % of US college students meet the cut-off criteria for poor sleep when measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), a validated tool that measures dimensions of sleep quality including duration and continuity (9) .…”

Examining Student Wellness for the Development of Campus-Based Wellness Programs

“…While college can be a time to adopt positive health behaviors, it can also be a time for students to develop negative habits that may affect their well-being and contribute to chronic diseases later in life (Lederer & Oswalt, 2017). Students report high levels of alcohol and tobacco use (Mallett et al, 2013;Ridner et al, 2016), poor diet (Hudd et al, 2000;LaFountaine, Neisen, & Parsonse, 2006), infrequent physical activity (LaFountaine et al, 2006), increased stress (Hudd et al, 2000), and insufficient sleep (Beauchemin, Gibbs, & Granello, 2018;Ridner et al, 2016). This has resulted in an increase in emotional and behavioral health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and psychological distress (Brunner, Wallace, Reymann, Sellers, & McCabe, 2014;Downs, Alderman, Schneiber, & Swerdlow, 2016).…”

“…Despite the many campus-based wellness programs and services offered, many U.S. students lack the strategies, skills, or support systems to manage stress or change pre-existing behaviors (Beauchemin et al, 2018;Wharf Higgins, Lauzon, Yew, Bratseth, & McLeod, 2010), resulting in unhealthy behaviors and poor overall wellness (Dubois, 2006). There is a need to continue to develop and design programs that increase students' wellness knowledge and behaviors (Nesbitt, 2012).…”