JMU adopted the Okanagan Charter in Fall 2024 as a part of its commitment to being a health-promoting campus.
The Okanagan Charter calls on post-secondary schools to embed health into all aspects of campus culture and to lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally. Created in June 2015, the Charter provides institutions with a common language, principles, and framework to become health and wellbeing promoting campuses.
JMU’s commitment to being a health-promoting campus is exemplified by JMU's Strategic Plan, as well as the work of the President’s Council on Health and Well-Being who work to create synergy across all divisions of the university with a focus on people, place, and planet.
By adopting the Okanagan Charter, JMU commits to the following calls to action:
- Embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across the administration, operations and academic mandates.
- Lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally.
Explore how JMU meets the Okanagan Charter calls to action:
Develop and create opportunities to build student, staff and faculty resilience, competence, personal capacity and life enhancing skills – and so support them to thrive and achieve their full potential and become engaged local and global citizens while respecting the environment.
Coordinate and design campus services to support equitable access, enhance health and well-being, optimize human and ecosystem potential and promote a supportive organizational culture.
- Created independent department of health promotion
- Interdisciplinary Quality Enhancement Plan that identifies and directs efforts towards at-risk students
- Created new key positions
- Mental Health Corresponders for Crisis Intervention Program
- Special Adviser, Health Promoting Campus Initiatives
- Expanded Threat Assessment Team
Use cross-cutting approaches to embed an understanding and commitment to health, well-being and sustainability across all disciplines and curricula, thus ensuring the development of future citizens with the capacity to act as agents for health promoting change beyond campuses.
Build and support inspiring and effective relationships and collaborations on and off campus to develop, harness and mobilize knowledge and action for health promotion locally and globally.
Contribute to health promoting knowledge production, application, standard setting and evaluation that advance multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary research agendas relevant to real world outcomes, and also, ensure training, learning, teaching and knowledge exchange that will benefit the future wellbeing of our communities, societies and planet.
