2008 Woodie Awards
Campus Wellness Challenge tracks physical and nutritional health
Health Center attempts to become more involved in the lives of students
Laura Gage
Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Headlines
The Campus Wellness Challenge (CWC) is a website available through the WOU portal that allows students to track their own health. CWC was originally the brain child of Luis Rosa, Director of the Health and Counseling Center, and Craig Wimmer, Health Education Coordinator of the Student Health and Counseling Center. Wimmer and Rosa began designing the project at the beginning of last summer while looking for a way to make the Health Center more involved in student's lives. The project was created by Wimmer and another health center employee Carli Stewart. The program was finally put into action two weeks ago at the health fair.
In the future, Wimmer intends to expand the program to enable students to track all types of health. Two types of personal health tracking are currently available on the website, which includes physical fitness health and nutritional health. Students can enter different types of physical activity and duration of activity and the online program will calculate the average amount of calories burned. The activities currently listed within the program vary from note taking in class to water polo or mountain biking. As time passes, more types of physical activity will be added. The nutritional health tracker does much of the same thing. People using the program can enter a food type and portion size and the caloric amount will be calculated by the program.
Once the CWC is expanded it will include personal trackers for mental, environmental, spiritual and social health. "It's not just about physical wellness, it's other types of health that students can work on and we try to provide that," said Stewart. The program will eventually extend beyond the bounds of the website. Already there is a part time staff nutritionist at Western, Sarah Weber comes to Western every Friday and splits her time between helping set up the menu in Valsetz and making herself available to students in the Health Center. Students can now make appointments with her and even bring in or email the results from their wellness tracker to have her help them get a better idea of what they need to do better to improve their health.
In the future, Wimmer intends to expand the program to enable students to track all types of health. Two types of personal health tracking are currently available on the website, which includes physical fitness health and nutritional health. Students can enter different types of physical activity and duration of activity and the online program will calculate the average amount of calories burned. The activities currently listed within the program vary from note taking in class to water polo or mountain biking. As time passes, more types of physical activity will be added. The nutritional health tracker does much of the same thing. People using the program can enter a food type and portion size and the caloric amount will be calculated by the program.
Once the CWC is expanded it will include personal trackers for mental, environmental, spiritual and social health. "It's not just about physical wellness, it's other types of health that students can work on and we try to provide that," said Stewart. The program will eventually extend beyond the bounds of the website. Already there is a part time staff nutritionist at Western, Sarah Weber comes to Western every Friday and splits her time between helping set up the menu in Valsetz and making herself available to students in the Health Center. Students can now make appointments with her and even bring in or email the results from their wellness tracker to have her help them get a better idea of what they need to do better to improve their health.
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