The University of Texas at Austin is one of the healthiest campuses in the nation, prioritizing health and demonstrating innovation and excellence in promoting student well being.
Active Minds, a national nonprofit group with 400 campus chapters advocating for young-adult mental health, named UT Austin a winner of a the inaugural 2015 Active Minds Health Campus Award. Active Minds recognized UT Austin for its cohesive, innovative public health approach to student physical and mental health and wellness.
Some of The University of Texas at Austin’s innovative efforts include:
- Initiating the university-wide “BeVocal” initiative, through which students are trained and empowered to recognize potentially harmful situations and intervene.
- Partnering with The University of Texas System Board of Regents to expand programs initiated at UT Austin to all University of Texas System schools. This includes after-hours, system-wide crisis intervention hotline and bystander intervention training, alcohol abuse prevention programs and centers for students in recovery.
- Placing mental health counselors in six academic units.
- Helping make healthy food options easy and affordable by updating vending machine policies, planting teaching gardens adjacent to residence halls, establishing healthy meeting guidelines and collaborating with local restaurants to address price barriers to healthy food for student organizations.
- Working with the Texas Legislature to pass a law requiring Texas public universities to give information on mental health and suicide prevention during orientation.
- Maintaining a tobacco-free campus and offering programmatic support to reinforce this policy.
- Offering 500,000 square feet of indoor and 40 acres of outdoor recreational space and using innovative technology to support and encourage physical activity.
- Vaccinating more than 10,000 students, faculty members and staffers annually across campus through a large, coordinated flu shot campaign.
Active Minds and a national panel of expert reviewers conducted a comprehensive, multistage application process to select the award’s winners. UT Wellness Network, the university’s healthy campus coalition, highlighted UT Austin’s wellness initiatives in the application.
The UT Wellness Network provides an infrastructure for collaboration and multidisciplinary partnerships to advance healthy campus initiatives. Under the network, faculty, staff and students work together to create a campus community where the healthy choice is the easy choice.
But the 2015 Active Minds Healthy Campus Award isn’t the first time UT Austin has been honored for helping Longhorns be healthy:
- UT Austin is one of the 25 healthiest colleges in the U.S., according to Greatist.com.
- The Forty Acres is home to one of the 11 Coolest College Recreation Centers, according to Men’s Health.
- UT Austin ranks No. 8 for Gluten-Free Accommodating Universities.
- Princeton Review ranks UT Austin’s Student Health Services 10th in the nation.
- According to The Daily Beast, UT Austin is the ninth-happiest college in the U.S.
Ranked among the biggest and best research universities in the country, UT Austin offers dozens of top-ranked programs with a proven record of success. The university is one of the top 20 public universities according to U.S. News & World Report, and no matter where you look, it’s clear that academic excellence is an essential part of the UT Austin experience.
