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About Healthy Trinity

Healthy Trinity is a cross-College partnership of people who want to make it easy to be healthy in Trinity. The wheel below represents each of the Healthy Trinity working groups. Any student or staff member who wants to contribute is welcome to join the groups below.

The Healthy Trinity Terms of Reference are available here.

The Healthy Implementation Framework 2020-2025 is a living document. The current Summary is available here or you can read the current version of the full Implementation Framework here.

Vision

“Trinity College Dublin is recognised as a ‘health enhancing’ university where everyone can enjoy physical, mental, and social health and wellbeing to their full potential, where health and wellbeing is valued and supported at every level of Trinity and is everyone's responsibility”.

Integral to fulfilment of this Vision is a partnership approach between staff, students and the institution with shared responsibilities at the individual and the institutional level.

Terms of Reference  

1. Embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across the administration, operations, student, services and academic mandates.
2. Promote, support and implement physical, social and mental health and wellbeing as key elements of the staff and student experience.
3. Advocate for policies which facilitate and support a healthy environment for staff and students through the physical infrastructure, facilities and services to support ‘making the healthier choice the easier choice’.
4. Unify the Trinity community by facilitating and nurturing contributions to and participation in the Healthy Trinity initiative from the entire Trinity community i.e. students (both undergraduate and postgraduate), staff (all grades), alumni, retired staff.
5. Build health and wellbeing knowledge and capacity among staff and students through innovative learning opportunities.
6. Encourage research and innovation oriented to achieving goals of a health enhancing university.

The full version of our Terms of Reference is available here.

Healthy Trinity Leads

Who co-ordinates the Healthy Trinity groups?

Leads for each working group sit on our central Committee as well as strategic partners: Dr. Eilish Burke, Prof. Catherine Darker, Prof. David Hevey, Michele Ryan, Gisele Scanlon – GSU.  We are grateful to staff and student contributors to the working groups as well as >100 partners across Trinity and at a national and international level .

Healthy Trinity in Trinity Strategy 25-30

At our June 2024 year end meeting, the Healthy Trinity partners agreed to pursue the following language in Trinity's Strategy 25-30.

Overarching Strategy

Create a healthy university, with thriving students and flourishing academic and operational staff, based in our net zero and nature positive campus, generating impact that improves and sustains surrounding, national and international populations.

Trinity, BE BRAVE! Put Healthy Planet, Healthy People at the centre of this strategy.
We challenge you to work with Healthy Trinity to embed health across the whole campus through our educational programmes, our research and innovation, and our day-to-day operations.

Specific Asks

• Implement the HEA Healthy Campus charter.
• Adopt the 3Set findings to improve Mental Health (funded by the HEA and led by Trinity) by incorporating three factors in student mental health:  Academic success, Belonging, Good mental health. 
• Improve access to and uptake of healthier plant-based diets
• Provide tangible opportunities for students and staff to increase their physical activity levels, and reduce sedentary behaviours, through the development of appropriate fit-for-purpose facilities across all of our sites and by changing staff and student spaces to encourage standing meetings, active breaks, healthy food etc.
• Expand Tobacco Free campus to include Tobacco and Vape by 2025
• Develop active and smarter travel on our distributed campus that improve health and biodiversity. 
• Increase access to sexual and reproductive health supports and engagement with Consent
• Support healthy habits by teaching, researching and intervening to improve upstream influences on the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and ultra-processed food as well as on mental health.

We need you

If you have ideas for making Trinity healthier and have the energy to help make your idea happen or if you’re just interested in health promotion and would like to meet others  interested, email us on  health.promotion@tcd.ie. You can also like us on facebook, or follow us on instagram or Twitter.

Healthy Trinity invites every member of the Trinity community – staff, students, alumni and friends - to:

• Take part in our events and intervention or suggest and run events in collaboration with us
• Work with us to change our campus to make it easier to be healthy
• Use Healthy Trinity as a subject of your assignements or projects
• Use Trinity as a living lab for your research
• Work with us to apply for funding for research or practice that promotes health
• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Consider running a campaign with us or tag us on your channel