Implementing A Winter Wellness University Program: A Community Health Nursing Project

Abstract

To improve the health and wellness of students, faculty and staff in a university setting, the authors developed and implemented a four-week health and wellness challenge project based on the application of the Population Health Promotion Model and the Community as Partner model to each of the steps of the community health nursing process. The purpose of this paper is to describe this community health improvement project, The Winter Wellness Challenge (WWC), which involved one university faculty in Western Canada. The entire project, which occurred over a 3-month period, included the following elements: a community health assessment of the community where the university was situated, which was initiated via a windshield survey, self-evaluated health status of program participants done via Survey Monkey prior to the start of the WWC program, the four-week intervention, and a post-intervention survey. In addition, key informant interviews were conducted with 21 participants after completion of the WWC to solicit participants’ feedback  about the utility of the project and to seek recommendations to improve future WWCs. The salient findings showed improvement in social support, duration of sleep, and stress level. From the participants’ perspective, the greatest improvement was in physical and nutritional wellness. The participants advocated for continuing implementation of the challenge in the future. Recommendations for improving the WWC were also provided.