SLU Completes Year Two of JED Campus Partnership

12/02/2024

Saint Louis University has completed year two of its four-year partnership with the Jed Foundation to evaluate and strengthen the University's mental health, substance misuse, and suicide prevention programs and systems for students.

In year two, SLU’s JED Task Force focused on the implementation of SLU's strategic plan with the assistance of our JED Campus advisor and the following internal working groups:

• Substance use
• Student belonging
• Screening
• Risk and response
• Policy
• Life skills and health promotion
• Health/mental health access
• Faculty/staff belonging
• Data
• Communication

These teams evaluate current student well-being resources, gathering data on the utilization of services such as the University Counseling Center, Student Health Center, and Dean of Students along with opportunities for health and connectedness such as recreational activities and fitness classes. 

These data insights combined with the information made available through SLU’s ongoing work with Missouri Partners in Prevention have already begun to shape resources and initiatives across campus.

“SLU is doing amazing work through the JED Campus Process,” said Eddy Gonzalez, SLU’s Jed Foundation campus advisor. “I am continually impressed by SLU's ability to bring the campus together to engage in this meaningful work and get things done.”

A few JED Task Force accomplishments in year two include: 

• The University Counseling Center reactivated its Collegiate Recovery Community (CRC) which supports students in recovery and their allies who are interested in making positive changes regarding their alcohol and/or other substance use. 
• SLU’s Student Development teams continued to increase efforts in our most-attended student well-being events, such as the University Wellness Days and Fresh Check Day, and implemented new opportunities for Faculty and Staff to better learn how to support students in need by hosting recurring faculty resource fairs, offering mental health first aid training, and providing digital resources such as the Blue Folder.
• SLU opened new WellSPACE locations on campus, bringing the total to six sites where students can relax, rejuvenate, meditate, learn, and enjoy community with one another.

"The mental health of our students is an important indicator of the environment and relationships we cultivate on campus,” said Katie Heiden-Rootes, Ph.D., assistant vice president in the division of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement and co-chair of SLU’s JED Campus Task Force. “We cannot control everything that happens to our students or what mental health concerns they bring with them when they join us. However, we can be a community committed to belonging and access to needed supports for those struggling with mental health. The work our JED Task Force has accomplished and will complete in the coming year, gives me hope that we are manifesting that community now."

In the fall 2022 semester, SLU conducted its first Healthy Minds Study. This study was an in-depth survey administered to students to capture a snapshot of the mental health of SLU students and their perceptions of how well the University meets their well-being needs. A follow-up study will be carried out in the fall 2025 semester to gauge campus improvements since implementing the strategic plan and identify areas of ongoing need.

SLU’s JED Campus initiative were implemented as an early action step from the Student Well-Being Task Force) and is linked to the Provost’s Academic Strategic Plan as part of Strategic Priority No. 3, Advancing Well-Being and Equity.

SLU's 2023-2024 progress report with the JED Foundation can be viewed online.