Healthy Campus 2020 (HC2020) is Oakwood University's organized and focused plan to study, track, and enrich the health status of the Oakwood study body. "HC2020 represents the culmination of years of conversation and concern over how our educational activity is impacting the health choices of Oakwood students," said Prudence Pollard, Ph.D., MPH, RD, SPHR, principal investigator and study design author.
Although various entities on campus were, in their own areas, trying to bring about greater health awareness about various elements of wellness, a centralized effort did not exist. In 2012, President Leslie Pollard learned that former U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin was "fully aware of the health commitments of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Dr. Benjamin's observation caused me to contemplate how we could crystallize years of conversation into a specific, measurable, scientific study about student health practices and how we can impact those practices," President Pollard said.
HC2020 is a longitudinal plan of 10 years. The first cohort will finish in four years, the average time it takes a student to complete their studies at Oakwood University. However, the University will continue to track information on the students after they leave the University, to see if the practices they learned were continued.
Oakwood administrators plan to officially launch HC2020 this August, during its Colloquium session, to begin the 2-015-2016 school year. "It is important that our faculty and staff fully understand what is involved. "We can't teach it to the students unless we are modeling it, ourselves," Pollard said.
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Friday, April 17th 2015 at 6:30PM
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