Health and Safety Week Brings Healthy Behaviors to UWG

UWG is ensuring that all students have everything they need to make healthy decisions this semester. Last week, University Recreation teamed up with Health Education on campus for Health and Safety week. This offered students a week’s worth of activities designed to promote health and wellness in areas that college students are known to struggle in the most. 

“In health education, our goal is to have our students adopt healthy behaviors centered around multiple areas of wellness,” said Ron King, assistant director of health education on campus. He’s been working in health education for 26 years, 16 of those being at UWG. “We focus on a lot of the physical, mental, social, emotional, and intellectual health.” 

Each day of last week offered a different, targeted experience for students. 

“[Monday] we had a Polished Person campaign to show solidarity with victims of sexual assault,” said King. “We were painting one nail and going over the reasons why we were there and who a polished person is and how you were supporting victims and survivors.” 

On Tuesday, UWG provided a much-needed service that students would regularly pay for out of pocket at the doctor’s office. The Georgia Department of Public Health visited campus and performed HIV tests in front of the UCC, free of charge to students. 

“Wednesday we are gonna have [a] health and fitness day,” said King. “It’s gonna be a day of just talking with our personal trainers and instructors from UREC in our fitness and wellness realm about how to be physically, mentally and emotionally healthy through exercise.”

The Newnan campus also got to experience Health and Safety week with a Balance West event on Wednesday and Thursday, which taught students about balancing their lives and health. 

“On the main campus, we’re gonna do something called Caught Red Handed,” said King. “We’re going to go around with red hands and spot students adopting healthy behaviors and we’re gonna say, we caught you red handed eating an apple instead of a bag of chips. Or we caught you being nice to someone. Just anything students are doing in a positive light, we are gonna go around and see if we can capture that moment.” 

King says that Health Education works heavily within the student body to learn the best ways to benefit life on campus. 

“We get together with graduate students and our student workers and let them be a voice,” said King. “It’s nothing to do with me. It’s all to do with them with what we decide we need to spread awareness of, whether that’s alcohol awareness, drug awareness, safer sex, sexual assault, personal wellness, or nutrition. They decide and we come up with ideas [for events] and put together a game plan for that.” 

King wants students to know that they are here for students in any way that can benefit any area of their health. 

“We’re here to be a resource for all students with any needs or concerns they have,” said King.