VCU Wellness Resource Center Wins National Award

By Tom Gresham

The American College Health Association has selected Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wellness Resource Center for an award for its work improving the health of VCU students.

VCU’s Wellness Resource Center, which is a part of University Student Health Services, received its award for “Best Practice in College Health” in the category of Health Education and Promotion Services at the American College Health Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia earlier this month. The award encourages the creation of programs and student patient services that are designed to advance the health of college students.

VCU was honored for its “Clicker-enhanced Social Norms Marketing Intervention” program, which aims to improve the health of students by reducing high-risk drinking and related harm. The program combines a campus-wide social norms campaign and the use of audience response technology (clickers) in alcohol education sessions.

“Our social norms marketing program has helped improve the accuracy of student perceptions about the alcohol use of their peers and increased the number of protective strategies VCU students use to limit alcohol use,” said Linda Hancock, Ph.D., director of the Wellness Resource Center.

The VCU social norms marketing campaign serves to reinforce healthy behaviors by presenting accurate information about normative use of alcohol and protective behaviors. A series of posters, which students helped develop, are posted around campus, and clickers – hand-held wireless devices that transmit personal responses – are used in sessions with students during Welcome Week and first-year orientation classes.

The clicker sessions show students the gap between perception and the reality of peer alcohol use. Data have demonstrated that students who participate in the clicker sessions have more accurate perceptions of normative alcohol use than those who do not attend a session and are more likely to limit their alcohol use.