The Promotion of Healthy Universities: A Systematic Review

Marta Reis^1,2,3*, Lúcia Ramiro^1,2, Diego Gomez-Baya⁴ & Margarida Gaspar de Matos^1,2,5

¹Aventura Social - Faculdade de Motricidade Humana /Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
²ISAMB /Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
³Post-doctoral Students of the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal
⁴Departament of Social, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidade de Huelva, Huelva, Espanha
⁵Sabbatical Grant Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal

Dr. Marta Reis, Psychologist of sexual and clinical health, Faculty of Human Kinetics/ University of Lisbon, Portugal.

Keywords: Healthy Universities; Health Promotion; Preventive Interventions; Systematic Review

Abstract

Universities are important organizations in what concerns the creation and improvement of health and wellbeing, thus healthy universities represent a key application of the health-promoting settings approach. The healthy Universities concept has a strong theoretical basis, and it appears appealing amongst universities worldwide. However, the way in which the approach has been implemented remains poorly grounded in theory. This systematic review aims to describe how universities have implemented the Healthy Universities concept in different cultures. In order to achieve this aim, we analyzed the following aspects of the implementation of the Health Promoting University: (a) definition of Healthy University; (b) priority areas of action; (c) subject matters; (d) projects and coordination; and (e) project evaluation and possible results. PsycINFO, ISI Web of Knowledge, ISI Proceedings, PubMed, Medline, Lilacs and Scielo were searched for articles on Health Promoting Universities, published between 1997 and 2017. Studies detailing the implementation of a Health Promoting University approach were included.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).