We believe that community-based health campaigns should come from community members themselves. When one group of students begins advocating for an improved health practice, the whole school population can benefit, creating The Wellness Effect.

Good health — it’s contagious!

Empowering the next generation of community health advocates.

Our mission: to empower students to lead community health campaigns, increasing confidence in health advocacy and literacy skills while improving community health behaviors.

What we do

In our programming, pre-health collegiate student-athletes mentor middle or high school students as they engage in health advocacy curricula and create their own community health campaigns. The goal is that in doing so, not only is community health improved, but mentors refine their health communication abilities and students gain health advocacy skills.

Our theory is that in advocating for community health, students will improve health literacy skills and gain self-efficacy over their own health. Through our initiative, we put this theory to the test!

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Our goals

We measure all goal progress with surveys!

For students

We hope to improve participant health advocacy skills, and in doing so improve confidence, health literacy and health behavior. Ultimately, students will feel empowered as community health advocates!

For the community

We aim for community health behaviors to improve as a result of campaigns materials.

For mentors

We anticipate that mentors will improve in their health communication abilities, preparing them for success in future careers as healthcare providers.

Program structure

Partnership

Pre-health collegiate student-athletes team up with a local public middle or high school.
Mentorship

Collegiate mentors guide participants through health advocacy curricula and assist participants in their health campaign creation.
Health Advocacy

We aim to increase student health advocacy skills and confidence by utilizing established curricula and campaign creation. We theorize that in advocating for community health, students improve health literacy skills and gain self-efficacy over their own health.
Community Engagement

Campaigns address real health issues identified by students as prevalent community problems. Using community feedback/survey data, students determine which messaging strategies will be most influential.
Impact Measurement

All of our goals are measured via surveys and other engagement analytics throughout the program. We emphasize to participants the importance of surveys in measuring program/campaign effectiveness.