Dal wellness initiative seeks uplifting opportunities for all

This article is part of a series highlighting wellness initiatives emerging from Dal’s workplace wellness strategy.

Dalhousie stepped up its commitment to campus health last summer with the launch of Be Well, an initiative designed to help make well-being more accessible to all students, faculty, and staff at the university.

Be Well was created in alignment with Dal's signing of the Okanagan Charter, an international partnership representing a formal commitment by signatories to being health-promoting universities. 

“Strong mental health and well-being is at the core of what gives us potential to be our best and to do our best,” says David Pilon, director of Student Health and Wellness at Dal and Be Well co-lead.

The Be Well steering group has engaged in consultations across Dal's campuses over the past eight months to raise awareness about national standards driving its work going forward and to uncover well-being activities already happening on campus, including:

• meeting Dr. Richard leBrasseur, an environmental psychologist and landscape architect and Director of the Green Infrastructure Performance Lab in the Faculty of Agriculture, whose PhD was devoted to how physical spaces contribute to well-being;
  
  
• hearing about a group of colleagues who go for a walk together every weekday; and  
  
  
• learning about the Student Success Framework within the Faculty of Health.

Also in this series: Dal highlights progress on employee wellness in new report

A collaborative endeavour

Be Well brings greater alignment between Student Affairs and Human Resources in efforts to address wellness at the university — and has spurred other powerful collaborations.

For instance, a new Faculty of Health project led by the Healthy Populations Institute seeks to evaluate Dal’s implementation of the Okanagan Charter, with potential plans to expand it into a formal research stream of activity as part of the Be Well initiative. 

“We know that healthy people live, learn, work, and play better,” says Brenda Merritt, dean of the Faculty of Health. “If we want to advance our standing as an institution, then we need to prioritize and support the health and well-being of our community. Signing the Okanagan Charter is an important step for Dalhousie — it signifies a commitment to create institutional policies, practices, and support mechanisms to enhance well-being and shift campus culture.”

Recommended reading: Dal deepens commitment to employment equity with bold new action plan

What’s next

Phase two of the Be Well initiative will be to assemble a group of interested colleagues from across the university to identify the projects and initiatives that will be prioritized for action in the next few months. 

To learn more about the Be Well, please attend an upcoming presentation to be held on March 9, 11:30 am. Learn more.

If you would like to be a part of this or future phases of the work, or if faculty, staff or students need wellness support please contact BeWell@dal.ca.

Recommended reading: Inside Dal's plan to build a better campus for all