NASPA and NIRSA Board of Directors endorse joint statement on well-being

NASPA and NIRSA’s Boards of Directors recently endorsed a joint statement on wellbeing. NASPA and NIRSA’s statement, Health and Well-being in Higher Education: A Commitment to Student Success, highlights strategic commitments from both associations in pursuit of innovating, supporting, and fostering a holistic, integrated, and strategic approach to well-being from the association level to the institutional level. College students expect and deserve campus environments created to support their development as healthy and whole people, and the work of health and well-being in higher education will provide our members the means to fill this need.

Crafting and signing on to this joint statement models the type of collaboration both NASPA and NIRSA recognize as essential to breaking down barriers within higher education and advancing this work. Collaboration is critical to integrated approaches to health and well-being and NASPA and NIRSA leaders intend to take the statement to other higher education organizations for their support.

Collaboration played an integral role in bringing this statement into being; it is a direct outcome of the NIRSA/NASPA Thought Leadership Forum on Well-being, as well as the ongoing, great work of our volunteer leaders and NASPA members on their campuses.

Taking cue from this work, NASPA has taken steps to better align and streamline our current programs, such as the BACCHUS Initiatives of NASPA, Culture of Respect, and NASPA Strategies Conferences to a central home with the NASPA Health, Safety, and Well-being Initiatives. Continued work with experts in the field will continue to provide NASPA members with resources, professional development opportunities, and strategies to implement change on campus.