HBCUs Alive!™
The benefits are substantial using a campus-wide health strategy; quite small reductions of average body weight, blood pressure and blood cholesterol confer substantial benefits on the health of student communities.
HBCUs Alive!™ is a program based on intramural collaborations for development and establishment of prevention initiatives and response efforts through strategic planning and implementation of campus-based activities and programs that promote healthy lifestyle choices among college students at historically black colleges and universities. Our team will work with your institution as it seeks to build the capacity of its students to make lifestyle choices that will serve them into adulthood and throughout their adult lives.
The impetus for HBCUs Alive!™ is Healthy Campus 2010, an effort linked to Healthy People 2010. Both of those national programs are focused on improving the health of individuals, communities and the Nation. Healthy Campus 2010 has two goals: (a) to increase quality and years of healthy life and (b) to eliminate health disparities. These goals have 28 focus areas, 467 specific objectives and 178 college-specific objectives. Our approach simplifies the program with a combination of high risk and population health strategies:
- The high risk strategy in public health focuses on those who are at increased risk of disease or disability or who have sub-clinical disease. This strategy involves screening and can be complex but it is usually cost-effective, with favorable benefit-risk ratios and high health professional acceptance.
- Prevention by the population health strategy is not easy since both subjects (a mix of normal and high risk individuals) and health professionals are difficult to motivate but may impart large benefits to the population. Current research shows the need for population-level strategies and we will work with your institution to adopt health conscious programs designed to engage the students in healthy life style decision-making.