Project Overview

Through a creative whiteboard style animation, the video makes a pitch to think big when it comes to “designing healthy campus communities.” Campuses are often where students learn, live, work, and play. In three short minutes, this resource helps to distill the latest thinking and research behind how and why post-secondary education can be designed to enable student health, wellbeing, learning, and success – from students to presidents, norms to policies, and from classrooms to residences. Everyone has a role to play in creating the conditions for students (and staff) to learn and thrive. There is no doubt that post-secondary institutions are complex, but the video reminds viewers that like the butterfly effect, small actions can have big effects.

Background

The “Designing Healthy Campus Communities” video was collaboratively developed by the Canadian Mental Health Association BC Division (coordinating agency for Healthy Minds | Healthy Campuses) and Simon Fraser University Health Promotion. Launched in 2013, this video captures the momentum towards a “whole campus” approach shared by Healthy Minds | Healthy Campuses Community of Practice members and aims to further stimulate dialogue and action at campuses across British Columbia and beyond.

Get Involved

Using the Video Within Your Campus Community

We encourage you to use the video to engage people within your campus community. To give you some ideas, others have reported using the video to engage stakeholders by sharing it through email, posting it on their website, incorporating it into meetings and presentations, and playing it as an introduction at events organized to assess, explore and plan towards a healthy campus community.

If you click on “vimeo” in the right hand corner of the video, you will be taken to the vimeo site with options to share (through facebook, twitter, email, etc) and download the video. Under the share option, you will also find a code that can be used to embed the video on your website.

VisualInstructions_SharingVideo

Photos

Videos

Designing Healthy Campus Communities

Presentations

Designing Healthy Campus Communities Webinar Launch of New Video

Testimonials

The video is actually a brilliant knowledge exchange tool because it takes what can be on the surface to folks that haven’t done this work before seemingly complex and challenging work to grapple with, and distills it to very simple concepts and very simple ideas and principles that can be applied in a very direct way in our day-to-day work here in campuses.

Stephen Smith, Director of Mental Health Promotion and Mental Health Illness Prevention, BC Ministry of Health

I love the video and I like in particular the use of fairly simple but powerful images such as the trampoline and the blankets to portray the ethos of a healthy campus through serving as a springboard for people to develop and aspire and as a supportive context for them to explore and experiment as I was saying before.

Mark Dooris, International Expert on Healthy Campuses and Director of the Healthy Settings Unit, University of Central Lancashire, UK

I think it’s just actually an amazing tool and I am really proud to have played a really small part in its development. I think it definitely supports the kind of transformation that we are attending to achieve through Healthy Minds, Healthy People not only in campus contexts, but in broader community contexts as well, so I think it’s application has great potential beyond post-secondary institutions and I’d really like to explore that at some point in the future as well.

Stephen Smith, Director of Mental Health Promotion and Mental Health Illness Prevention, BC Ministry of Health

I think it is an excellent video to introduce the concept of a systems approach to a healthy campus.

Community Member

It’s really been a privilege I know for those of us at SFU to be associated with this initiative and to have partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association on the video, in addition to community organizations and government representatives who support this work. One reason this video has special meaning is that it dove tails so well with the strategic vision that the university has adopted recently.

Andrew Petter, President and Vice-Chancellor, Simon Fraser University

At SFU, we’ve been using the video to engage stakeholders both on and off campus to be part of a
thriving healthy campus community, whether it be within learning and working environments, physical spaces on campus, or as part of social interaction and community engagement.

Rosie Dhaliwal, Health Promotion Specialist, Health Promotion Team, Simon Fraser University

I really like how you used the word design because it implies that creating supportive settings is a conscious and strategic process and also that harnessing design and planning expertise is part of the setting approach and to fostering supportive environments.

Mark Dooris, International Expert on Healthy Campuses and Director of the Healthy Settings Unit, University of Central Lancashire, UK

I was struck by your emphasis on doing more than addressing the needs of individual students, of taking a systems approach and of using a wide range of terms such as resilience, engaged and creative to articulate what being healthy is all about. In that sense of going beyond the normal contained box of just talking about health and well-being, it’s been extremely successful.

Mark Dooris, International Expert on Healthy Campuses and Director of the Healthy Settings Unit, University of Central Lancashire, UK

It was wonderful. Clear. Thoughtful. The ideas are very well presented and will easily incite thought and action on part of the viewer. It was a wonderful conceptualization of small to large picture and I particularly appreciate the way in which student "management" was portrayed in such a broad screen, inclusive and respectful manner.

Community Member

Project - Designing Healthy Campus Communities Video

Project Overview

Background

Get Involved

Using the Video Within Your Campus Community

Photos

Videos

Designing Healthy Campus Communities

Presentations

Designing Healthy Campus Communities Webinar Launch of New Video

Testimonials

I think it is an excellent video to introduce the concept of a systems approach to a healthy campus.

At SFU, we’ve been using the video to engage stakeholders both on and off campus to be part of a
thriving healthy campus community, whether it be within learning and working environments, physical spaces on campus, or as part of social interaction and community engagement.

I really like how you used the word design because it implies that creating supportive settings is a conscious and strategic process and also that harnessing design and planning expertise is part of the setting approach and to fostering supportive environments.

HM|HC on Twitter

Project - Designing Healthy Campus Communities Video

Project Overview

Background

Get Involved

Using the Video Within Your Campus Community

Photos

Videos

Designing Healthy Campus Communities

Presentations

Designing Healthy Campus Communities Webinar Launch of New Video

Testimonials

I think it is an excellent video to introduce the concept of a systems approach to a healthy campus.

At SFU, we’ve been using the video to engage stakeholders both on and off campus to be part of a thriving healthy campus community, whether it be within learning and working environments, physical spaces on campus, or as part of social interaction and community engagement.

I really like how you used the word design because it implies that creating supportive settings is a conscious and strategic process and also that harnessing design and planning expertise is part of the setting approach and to fostering supportive environments.

HM|HC on Twitter

At SFU, we’ve been using the video to engage stakeholders both on and off campus to be part of a
thriving healthy campus community, whether it be within learning and working environments, physical spaces on campus, or as part of social interaction and community engagement.