Wellness Campaign Seeking Student Input

What does wellness mean to you?  Do visions of kale, aromatherapy and organic labels dance in your head?  Or is wellness simply the absence of disease?

For the Wellness Program at UCSF, the meaning embodies much more than catchphrases and buzzwords.  Most of all, the Wellness Program empowers UCSF employees to be active participants of their own health.

The Wellness Program is looking to make a splash on campus in January.  Led by a small team of four committed individuals, the program promotes living well for more than 23,000 UCSF employees. 

Since its inauguration three years ago, the program has offered dozens of free nutrition lectures, cooking demonstrations, yoga and Zumba classes and chair massages.  The program is a large promoter of the current flu shot clinics, and collaborates with several wellness partners on campus to implement the health-testing program Know Your Numbers and the UCSF Walking Program.

Now, the Wellness Program is looking for student input on its next project:  the Culture of Wellness.  This visual campaign features images of various UCSF employees, from the individuals serving our community at Moffitt to school administrators, demonstrating wellness in simple acts. 

The visual campaign is planned to roll out in the second week of January, and will also provide managers with a “Wellness Toolkit” stuffed full of healthy tips and tools to utilize right in their offices.

So what can you do?  The Wellness Program is looking for your ideas to include in the Wellness Toolkit.  Have you learned something in your studies you think the UCSF population could benefit from? Or do you practice your own wellness methods that you would like to share?

Things already planned as part of the toolkit include: a daily stretching poster that managers can hang up in break rooms, healthy potluck rules to live by and 30 wellness-at-work tips. 

Submit your ideas to Leanne Jensen at Leanne.Jensen@ucsf.edu by November 8.  Your entries should be no longer than a page in length and have a focus on wellness. Be creative, think simple and, above all, fun!