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Thursday, February 27, 2025

‘Well U at LU’: Paving the Way for a Healthier Farmville and LU Community

Director of Student Health & Wellness Margo Potts said, “We want to have Longwood become known as a university that values wellness.”

“Well U at LU” is the Health & Wellness Center’s current initiative. It was put in place to encourage better health and wellness for Longwood students and to encourage and motivate students to alter their lifestyles and behavior in order to make balanced and healthier choices.

The main purpose of “Well U at LU” is to create a culture of wellness on campus to ensure physical, spiritual and psychological health.

According to Potts, this initiative was created and is being executed together by the Wellness Unit, which includes the Student Health and Wellness Center, Campus Recreation, the Golf Course, the Counseling Center and the Office of Environmental Health & Safety.

While the Wellness Unit has been around for about six years, they developed the saying “Well U at LU” about one year ago to expand on other themes and sayings that were previously developed.

Each aspect of the Wellness Unit is working together to get every person on campus to believe in the idea that being the best they can be when it comes to taking care of their wellness is a good long-term goal, a valuable life skill and that it can help prepare students to become successful in life.

Potts said, “It’s not really an event. It’s not really a program. It’s really the language that we are choosing to use to insinuate this culture into the university as a whole.”

The Wellness Unit plans to advertise and promote “Well U at LU” by speaking to students and using their website as a primary outlet for students to provide general wellness information.

They will hold various events that consist of educational workshops, work-site training, recreational programs, client/ patient appointments and classroom/organization outreach presentations with students, faculty and staff.

According to Potts, some of these events will include the Welcome Back Wellness Fair, which allows programing and educational work focused on safe and appropriate alcohol use, stress and sleep management workshops and sexual assault prevention.

Campus recreation provides programs that encourage students to be active, and the Counseling Center offers many programs like the “Food for Thought Series,” which raises a mental health perspective, and group or individual counseling sessions.

Potts said, “Everything that we do is to provide resources and to provide information for people to develop their own personal habits as well. So, it’s not one program per se. It’s not ‘let’s create a well you, let’s create a well you.’ We are trying to create the environment that allows you all to see opportunities to develop those habits in yourselves so that you can take them with you when you leave.” This initiative was inspired by the “Seven Dimensions of Wellness,” which were developed by the Wellness Unit to tell the community about the different aspects of wellness that play essential roles in a person’s health and wellness.

The “Seven Dimensions of Wellness” consist of physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social, environmental and occupational wellness.

Potts said, “Everything that we do ties into the seven dimensions of wellness.”

Physical wellness includes exercise, diet, and drug and alcohol use.

Emotional wellness promotes self-confidence and self- acceptance.

Spiritual wellness, which is the third dimension of wellness, comprises of helping students find their guiding beliefs and values.

The fourth component, intellectual wellness, means reaching for intellectual growth.

Social wellness includes having healthy communication skills and an ability to uphold intimacy.

The environmental wellness component promotes the standard of living on the planet and for the environment.

The seventh dimension is occupational wellness, which comprises of the capability to balance work and leisure time.

Potts said, “We as the Wellness Unit really feel that it is important to have opportunities wherever they can be, and so every single thing that we do focuses on as many dimensions of wellness that are appropriate for the program that we are doing.”

The Health & Wellness Center is trying to get students, as well as the community, to understand that wellness is not just about physical health.

Potts said, “It is so much more than that. It is really the whole person and the community. If it becomes part of our culture, that’s a benefit.”

In the Health & Wellness Center, the number one wellness public health and community- wide initiative is to promote the flu vaccine to the community. Knowing that the flu is easily spread amongst college communities like Longwood’s, Potts believes that the best thing that can be done is to use the flu vaccine.

The flu vaccine works in two ways: it prevents the person who is getting vaccinated from getting the flu, and it prevents anyone the person comes in contact with from getting the flu because there will be no exposure.

Potts said, “You are all in your formative years as young adults, so you are developing habits as young adults that can stick with you when you leave here. In addition to what you are learning in the classrooms in terms of focusing on your major and becoming young professionals in whatever field you want to go into, you also now are responsible for your own health and wellness.”