Campus Health announced the launch of a new digital hub for student wellness called WellCats on July 24. The goal of this new resource is to advance health knowledge by providing a wide range of health tips to students in an easily accessible digital space.
WellCats targets student concerns, such as mental health and relationships, anxiety, depression, digital detox, coping with current events, nutrition, gun violence, sexual health, alcohol moderation and more. WellCats also provides a point of access to various other UA wellness resources. WellCats is curated by professionals from both Campus Health and Counseling & Psych Services.
“The content is student-friendly, concise and intuitive,” said health communications manager Carrie Johnson. “It is designed to be a safe space so students can explore topics, even if there are topics they don’t feel comfortable asking about in person.”
Johnson is one of the creators of WellCats, along with assistant director of Counseling & Psych Services Leslie Ralph. This will be the first academic year that WellCats will be available to students.
Campus Health is consistently looking for new innovations to support student wellness. Tech-savvy students are driven towards content that is “relevant, succinct, interactive and includes a variety of media,” Johnson said. With these in mind, an online resource with straightforward information provided by a digital hub like WellCats seemed a natural idea.
WellCats uses health and wellness data to assist them in knowing what is going on with students and what topics they believe are important. For example, the WellCat topics were chosen based on frequently asked questions from UA students, as well as data that Campus Health knew was relevant to their lives, according to Johnson.
Campus Health analyzed 6 years of data from Campus Health social media and came to the conclusion that a digital health education is more likely to increase health knowledge and behaviors in its audience. Johnson also pointed to the reception of the Suicide Prevention Initiative as an example of how websites can be used effectively as health intervention tools.
“Campus Health is data-driven in all aspects of our work, and health education and websites are no different,” Johnson said.
There are plans in progress to add more topics to the WellCats page in the future, one of which will involve recipes.
“There are two arms of WellCats: our student WellCat Ambassadors and the WellCats digital hub,” said health educator Ryley Tegler, who works with the student ambassadors.
The WellCat ambassadors are a team of UA students who help their peers get connected to health services on campus through outreach activities, such as presentations and tabling and special events such as therapy animal visits.
“We hope it will serve as a reliable source of health information and empower them to learn more about their own health and make decisions that support their personal health and wellness goals,” Johnson said. “Whether that’s getting better sleep, understanding health insurance, examining their own wellness or reaching out to resources for support.”
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