Opinion
Why every campus should have a student director of public health
When I graduated from high school, I saw college as a place where I would make all of my own choices, the beginning of adulthood. However, I quickly learned that the new freedom of college brings challenges to both mental and physical health.
College students have to adjust to living with strangers, an exceptionally fertile environment for the common cold and other illnesses, and the all-too-real problem of food insecurity, all while dealing with intense academic expectations. Even the most caring university administrators struggle to meet the health needs of hundreds—or in the case of my school, tens of thousands—of young adults.
Colleges need to learn from students. In particular, more universities should establish student public health director positions.
I served as the student body director of public health last academic year at the University of California, San Diego, and am currently re-applying for the position this year. As an active member of the UCSD student government—the Associated Students of UC San Diego—I applied for the position because I strongly believe that all college students should have access to both health education and the chance to reach their full health potential. At its core, public health has always been a field rooted in service, advocacy, and education. I wanted to increase health awareness among all students on campus, advocate for student needs, and lead public health projects that improved campus health.
My experiences in the role, combined with the student stories I’ve been privileged to hear, have convinced me that these types of positions improve student health and safety on campus.
Student directors of public health serve as a vital bridge between students and university administrators. These student leaders collaborate with campus departments to champion proactive public health practices that meet student needs. Through leading targeted public health initiatives—such as advocating for increasing wheelchair accessibility across campus—they can enhance the overall health and safety of the campus community.
The role’s significance stems from two critical functions: safeguarding students’ long-term health and wellbeing, and ensuring student voices reach university leadership in meaningful ways. Although universities do actively promote student health, their priorities sometimes don’t align with actual student needs.
For example, UCSD students had called on the school for years to fund universal menstrual-product access across campus. However, it wasn’t until two years ago that the first large-scale menstrual project was passed and implemented in all women’s restrooms on campus. When university administrators lack deep insight into student perspectives, this misalignment leads to reduced student engagement with public health measures and preventive practices.
This is where student public health directors can make an impact. Because they are students first, student public health directors both experience and recognize students’ needs. We are well-positioned to let administrators know when they’re not connecting with students.
For instance, UCSD offers a food pantry, mental health counseling, career development centers, and other services meant for students to utilize freely at their convenience. Yet, inadequate publicity for them often means they’re underused. This became clear at a quarterly sit-and-meet with UCSD undergraduate students that I held last year, where many voiced concerns about the lack of awareness of some health resources on campus and difficulty accessing these resources promptly.
One student mentioned she didn’t know UCSD had a free food pantry until her junior year. Another said he wasn’t aware that we had free substance abuse and alcohol counseling available at our student health center. Students who were aware that these programs exist claim that access to these resources can be difficult. A former classmate mentioned that getting mental health support on campus took months for a request to be processed and approved.
Student public health directors can serve as liaisons between students and administration. Their dual perspective allows them to translate student-voiced needs and concerns into targeted public health initiatives, ensuring that university resources align with the community they serve.
Additionally, student public health directors can influence the development of new university policies. On a campus as vast as mine, with more than 45,000 students, student voices often go unheard during policy development. Thoughtful initiatives are crucial for fostering student growth, but how many of these policies genuinely respond to student concerns and experiences? How many emerge from direct student input? In my experience, not many.
Creating student directors of public health positions on more university campuses could help amplify student voices. Since these directors are part of student government, they have access to connections and resources and can directly advocate for students with unmet needs.
As student director of public health, I expanded the role and advocated for equal opportunities for all students to learn and thrive. I launched projects that included partnering with CALPIRG UCSD on a rainwater collection system and lighting staircases to help visually impaired students navigate campus at night. These projects are ongoing, and my experience confirmed how essential this position is for creating a more accessible and equitable campus.
Student directors of public health have the potential to significantly contribute to the betterment of campus health and wellbeing. As the only UC campus to have an established student director of public health role, UCSD serves as a powerful example to others that investment in student leaders can lead to the development of healthier and safer campuses.
Lead image: Lisa5201 / iStock
Republish this article
<p>University policies often don't reflect what students actually need.</p>
<p>Written by Elsa Wang</p>
<p>This <a rel="canonical" href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/why-every-campus-should-have-a-student-director-of-public-health/">article</a> originally appeared in <a href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/">Harvard Public Health magazine</a>. Subscribe to their <a href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/subscribe/">newsletter</a>.</p>
<p class="has-drop-cap">When I graduated from high school, I saw college as a place where I would make all of my own choices, the beginning of adulthood. However, I quickly learned that the new freedom of college brings challenges to both mental and physical health.</p>
<p>College students have to adjust to living with strangers, an exceptionally fertile environment for the common cold and other illnesses, and the all-too-real problem of food insecurity, all while dealing with intense academic expectations. Even the most caring university administrators struggle to meet the health needs of hundreds—or in the case of my school, tens of thousands—of young adults.</p>
<p>Colleges need to learn from students. In particular, more universities should establish student public health director positions.</p>
<p>I served as the student body director of public health last academic year at the University of California, San Diego, and am currently re-applying for the position this year. As an active member of the UCSD student government—the Associated Students of UC San Diego—I applied for the position because I strongly believe that all college students should have access to both health education and the chance to reach their full health potential. At its core, public health has always been a field rooted in service, advocacy, and education. I wanted to increase health awareness among all students on campus, advocate for student needs, and lead public health projects that improved campus health.</p>
<p>My experiences in the role, combined with the student stories I've been privileged to hear, have convinced me that these types of positions improve student health and safety on campus.</p>
<p>Student directors of public health serve as a vital bridge between students and university administrators. These student leaders collaborate with campus departments to champion proactive public health practices that meet student needs. Through leading targeted public health initiatives—such as advocating for increasing wheelchair accessibility across campus—they can enhance the overall health and safety of the campus community.</p>
<p>The role's significance stems from two critical functions: safeguarding students' long-term health and wellbeing, and ensuring student voices reach university leadership in meaningful ways. Although universities do actively promote student health, their priorities sometimes don’t align with actual student needs.</p>
<p>For example, UCSD students had called on the school for years to fund universal menstrual-product access across campus. However, it wasn’t until two years ago that the first large-scale menstrual project was passed and implemented in all women’s restrooms on campus. When university administrators lack deep insight into student perspectives, this misalignment leads to reduced student engagement with public health measures and preventive practices.</p>
<p>This is where student public health directors can make an impact. Because they are students first, student public health directors both experience and recognize students' needs. We are well-positioned to let administrators know when they’re not connecting with students.</p>
<p>For instance, UCSD offers a food pantry, mental health counseling, career development centers, and other services meant for students to utilize freely at their convenience. Yet, inadequate publicity for them often means they’re underused. This became clear at a quarterly sit-and-meet with UCSD undergraduate students that I held last year, where many voiced concerns about the lack of awareness of some health resources on campus and difficulty accessing these resources promptly.</p>
<p>One student mentioned she didn’t know UCSD had a free food pantry until her junior year. Another said he wasn’t aware that we had free substance abuse and alcohol counseling available at our student health center. Students who were aware that these programs exist claim that access to these resources can be difficult. A former classmate mentioned that getting mental health support on campus took months for a request to be processed and approved.</p>
<p>Student public health directors can serve as liaisons between students and administration. Their dual perspective allows them to translate student-voiced needs and concerns into targeted public health initiatives, ensuring that university resources align with the community they serve.</p>
<p>Additionally, student public health directors can influence the development of new university policies. On a campus as vast as mine, with more than 45,000 students, student voices often go unheard during policy development. Thoughtful initiatives are crucial for fostering student growth, but how many of these policies genuinely respond to student concerns and experiences? How many emerge from direct student input? In my experience, not many.</p>
<p>Creating student directors of public health positions on more university campuses could help amplify student voices. Since these directors are part of student government, they have access to connections and resources and can directly advocate for students with unmet needs.</p>
<p>As student director of public health, I expanded the role and advocated for equal opportunities for all students to learn and thrive. I launched projects that included partnering with <a href="https://calpirgstudents.org/chapters/uc-san-diego/">CALPIRG UCSD</a> on a rainwater collection system and lighting staircases to help visually impaired students navigate campus at night. These projects are ongoing, and my experience confirmed how essential this position is for creating a more accessible and equitable campus.</p>
<p class=" t-has-endmark t-has-endmark">Student directors of public health have the potential to significantly contribute to the betterment of campus health and wellbeing. As the only UC campus to have an established student director of public health role, UCSD serves as a powerful example to others that investment in student leaders can lead to the development of healthier and safer campuses.</p>
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S1L5BS4DJN"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
if (typeof gtag !== "function") {function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-S1L5BS4DJN');
</script>
Republishing guidelines
We’re happy to know you’re interested in republishing one of our stories. Please follow the guidelines below, adapted from other sites, primarily ProPublica’s Steal Our Stories guidelines (we didn’t steal all of its republishing guidelines, but we stole a lot of them). We also borrowed from Undark and KFF Health News.
Timeframe: Most stories and opinion pieces on our site can be republished within 90 days of posting. An article is available for republishing if our “Republish” button appears next to the story. We follow the Creative Commons noncommercial no-derivatives license.
When republishing a Harvard Public Health story, please follow these rules and use the required acknowledgments:
- Do not edit our stories, except to reflect changes in time (for instance, “last week” may replace “yesterday”), make style updates (we use serial commas; you may choose not to), and location (we spell out state names; you may choose not to).
- Include the author’s byline.
- Include text at the top of the story that says, “This article was originally published by Harvard Public Health. You must link the words “Harvard Public Health” to the story’s original/canonical URL.
- You must preserve the links in our stories, including our newsletter sign-up language and link.
- You must use our analytics tag: a single pixel and a snippet of HTML code that allows us to monitor our story’s traffic on your site. If you utilize our “Republish” link, the code will be automatically appended at the end of the article. It occupies minimal space and will be enclosed within a standard <script> tag.
- You must set the canonical link to the original Harvard Public Health URL or otherwise ensure that canonical tags are properly implemented to indicate that HPH is the original source of the content. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
Packaging: Feel free to use our headline and deck or to craft your own headlines, subheads, and other material.
Art: You may republish editorial cartoons and photographs on stories with the “Republish” button. For illustrations or articles without the “Republish” button, please reach out to republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Exceptions: Stories that do not include a Republish button are either exclusive to us or governed by another collaborative agreement. Please reach out directly to the author, photographer, illustrator, or other named contributor for permission to reprint work that does not include our Republish button. Please do the same for stories published more than 90 days previously. If you have any questions, contact us at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Translations: If you would like to translate our story into another language, please contact us first at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Ads: It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support Harvard Public Health.
Responsibilities and restrictions: You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third-party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Harvard Public Health recognizes that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties aggregate or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You may not republish our material wholesale or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You may not use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
Any website on which our stories appear must include a prominent and effective way to contact the editorial team at the publication.
Social media: If your publication shares republished stories on social media, we welcome a tag. We are @PublicHealthMag on X, Threads, and Instagram, and Harvard Public Health magazine on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Questions: If you have other questions, email us at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
More in Policy & Practice
Public health reformers need better communication tools
There’s a way to deal with brain injuries in football. It isn’t safety gear.
