Health Website For Students and Staff at TCD

Posted on: 26 October 2005

TCD’s Health Service is increasing its emphasis on health promotion.  To mark the return of students, the health team has developed a health promotion website.

For the past five years, the Health Centre at Trinity has included health promotion in its activities. This has included research on the lifestyle of students, smoking cessation courses for staff and a series of health events. The latest effort is the development of a health promotion website for students and staff

The Health Centre at Trinity College was set up more than 40 years ago to ensure that all students had access to free medical care. Since then the practice has developed and expanded and now includes psychiatric services, travel health services, a sexual health clinic, physiotherapy and a variety of other services provided by a team of practice nurses. This serves a community of 15,000 students and 2700 staff.

‘We feel that the medical services provided by Trinity are now in good shape’, said Dr. David Thomas, Trinity’s Medical Director ‘so for the past five years we have been turning our focus to preventative medicine. In June we hired a Health Promotion Officer for the first time to lead our activities, the first of which is our new website’.

The website covers a wide range of health issues including managing stress, mental health, physical activity, healthy eating, smoking, alcohol, drugs and sexual health. ‘Our priorities are to promote moderate drinking and safer sexual practices among students. Research carried out on campus shows that most students binge drink regularly and many do not always use condoms to protect themselves from STIs’, said Dr. Aileen McGloin, the Health Promotion Officer for Trinity College. ‘We are also gathering other baseline information. For example, we don’t know much about the nutrition knowledge or eating habits of students yet, but are currently carrying out research to assess awareness.’

The launch of the website marks the first of a series of health promoting events at Trinity. These include health awareness weeks for mental health, sexual health, alcohol and stress management. ‘Everybody knows that, for most people, student life involves a lot of fun and a certain amount of mayhem. We don’t want to change that, we just want to make sure our students stay safe while they are with us, and to give them an opportunity to learn about healthy living while they are here,” Stated Dr. McGloin, “We hope this will help them cope with the stresses of college life and what ever life throws at them when they leave’.

For further information on health promotion at Trinity College Dublin please visit http://www.tcd.ie/College_Health/