UCLA’s Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center recognized as national model
Civic EngagementFriends and SupportersStudentsUCLA Chancellor Gene Block, Carol Block, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt attended the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center’s year-end celebration last month, joining the hundreds of students, faculty, employees, friends and honorees involved in the 11-year effort to create a culture of preventive health and well-being on campus.
The initiative, launched in 2013, was born out of a question posed by Jane Semel as to why UCLA is so good at treating disease — but not at preventing it. Leadership and academics came together to find innovative ways to promote healthy living on campus and in 2018, the center — supported by Jane and Terry Semel — was established.
“The Semel HCI Center grew out of a recognition that we were looking at our health in a reactive way — responding to illness rather than encouraging healthy lifestyles in the first place,” Chancellor Block said. “The center introduced a proactive and comprehensive approach to wellness that has become an integral part of the UCLA experience.”
The initiative has been replicated systemwide with all UC campuses participating in the UC Healthy Campus Network to enhance efforts and share best practices. The center was also recently cited in a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine consensus study report as a collective impact model that works to prevent mental health and substance abuse problems on a university campus.