Columbia University Health Services

Recognizing that health is a vital part of learning, Alice! works to create and sustain a healthy campus community in which students can achieve their personal and academic goals.

Utilizing the Standards of Practice for Health Promotion in Higher Education, the goals of Alice! are to:

• Enhance the efficiency, usability, accuracy, and usage of Go Ask Alice!, CU Move (formerly the 100 m.i.l.e. Club), and Stressbusters.
• Develop, implement, and evaluate evidence- and theory-based HP initiatives addressing priority health issues.
• Conduct research on health promotion in higher education and convey our results to the world.
• Leverage innovative technology to enhance health promotion efforts and support Columbia University sustainability goals.

Alice! is committed to the following values in the work we do, the services we provide, and our interactions with students and colleagues: Balance, Collaboration, Inclusiveness, Innovation, Integrity, Leadership, and Professionalism.

Alice ! believes that health is vital to learning and we strive to connect our work to the academic mission of Columbia. We help the campus community be healthier so students can learn better. Our work is guided by the Standards of Practice for Health Promotion in Higher Education. Our role is to assess the health status of students, strategically plan to prevent student health issues at the community level, collaborate with our colleagues across the University to improve the health of the campus, implement theory and evidence-based health promotion initiatives, and offer specific health education interventions.

What is health promotion?
Health promotion is focused on broad, community-level interventions that help shape the environmental contexts in which people live, learn, love, and work. Health promotion includes things like policy changes, advocacy, adjusting built environments, and coalition building. Much of the work of health promotion happens “behind the scenes” and involves collecting and analyzing data, setting priorities for interventions, assessing and evaluating the progress of programs and services, meeting with key stakeholders and decision-makers, advocating for policies or structural changes that will help improve the health of the population, and implementing health-enhancing initiatives. Some of the specific health promotion work that Alice! does includes: conducting assessments of student health attitudes and behaviors, analyzing data to determine where our resources can best be utilized to prevent illness and improve student health and learning, meeting with particular groups of students and the faculty and staff that work with them to determine how to address the health issues most affecting their academic performance, and advocating for policy and programmatic changes that enhance the health of the campus environment.

What is health education?
Health education is one strategy of health promotion and is focused on helping individuals learn and use health-enhancing skills. Health education is often very visible and tangible (ie. it’s what most health education programs are “known for”), and it often includes things like educational programs, activities, and skill-building sessions (in groups or with individuals). Health education is part of health promotion, but health promotion is not only health education. Some of the specific health education work that Alice! does includes: the Go Ask Alice! health Q & A internet service, Stressbusters, CU Move, and workshops.