Background and Overview

Healthy Universities represents one example of the Healthy Settings approach, which adopts a whole system perspective and aims to make the places within which people learn, live, work and play supportive to health and wellbeing. Alongside healthcare, primary and secondary education, further education and many other sectors, higher education provides important opportunities for health improvement – and higher education institutions offer enormous potential as settings in and through which to promote public health.

Contexts

Reflecting and building on the success of other settings initiatives such as Healthy Schools and, more recently, Healthy Further Education, there has recently been increasing interest in moving beyond a single-topic focus (e.g. on drugs, sexual health) to develop a more holistic and strategic ‘whole university’ approach. This shift is supported by a growing evidence base and by the Government’s public health strategy, which includes a focus on further and higher education. The HEFCE-funded project Developing Leadership and Governance for Healthy Universities, which ran from 2009-2012, strengthened the National Network and developed and disseminated web-based guidance tools and case studies.

Model
In order to understand and guide Healthy Universities work, it is useful to draw on a model that illustrates what a ‘whole university’ approach means.

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