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Student Wellbeing Health Equity Commitment Statement
Updated November 12, 2024
The Student Wellbeing team affirms our commitment to an approach steeped in health equity, accessibility, and inclusion, that honours our students’ voice and lived experience. We commit to the following:
- We are committed to understanding that students are experts in their own experiences, and to working collaboratively with them, the Ģý community, our neighbours in downtown Toronto and our partners in other communities to cultivate wellbeing.
- We are actively committed to acknowledging and reducing health disparities, and to co-creating structures and practices with our students and community members that recognize and address health inequities.
- We are devoted to adopting a comprehensive, trauma-informed and systemic approach to care that considers the whole person, and that is rooted in accessibility and an understanding of the social determinants of health.
- We are committed to taking responsibility for making positive change in the lives of students and the community, and will take direct and ongoing action to address ableism, attitudinal barriers, anti-Asian racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-2SLGBTQIA+ discrimination, and other forms of racism and oppression.
- We are committed to learning, unlearning and supporting one another as members of Student Wellbeing as we embrace bringing about positive change in the lives of students and the community through our work.
Fall 2021 Update
Updated November 1, 2021
In March 2021, the Student Wellbeing team affirmed its commitment to health equity and contributing to a campus community that fosters a fair opportunity for all students to reach their health potential by publishing its Health Equity Commitment Statement. The following summarizes some of the highlights from our health equity focused work over the past year:
- STRIVE programming offered all students registered with Academic Accommodation Support (AAS) a collaborative way to build community and cultivate wellbeing through development and sharing of learning strategies and assistive technology support. By attending STRIVE programming, students reported feeling: “connected”, “seen”, “not alone”, “productive”, “calm”, “supported”.
- To help reduce the stress associated with remote test taking, and despite being physically closed, the Test Centre ensured access to its services by assisting with test environment set-up for individual student tests and exams remotely. Test accommodations were set up through D2L for 1,869 assessments during the 2020-2021 academic year.
- The Test Centre established equitable access to assessment and testing by supporting students experiencing technical challenges with accessibility software (due to the remote testing environment), remote-scribes and Test Centre support.
- Creation of staff positions to address identified gaps in staff diversity
- In consultation with key community partners, created tailored pathways of care for Black-identified and Indigenous students seeking counselling support
- Enhanced provision of culturally appropriate care through focused improvements on matching for students from equity-deserving groups requiring mental health care from providers with shared backgrounds
- Provided assessment, program planning and content expert support and guidance to the as they explored new avenues to provide health and wellbeing support for continuing education students
- Expanded and flexed its enrolment model to include self booking and introducing evening appointments so as to reach more students
- Offering Student Health Assistance and Resiliency Peer Program (SHARPP) students as a comprehensive and unlimited mental health and wellbeing resource to continuing education students in collaboration with CESAX
- Physicians trained in Trans-care including hormone treatment and application for Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) covered gender affirming surgery
- Physicians up-to-date on new procedures for long acting contraception, specifically subdermal implant (Nexplanon)
- Improving digital patient care and will soon offer secure messaging/document sharing with patients and access online appointment booking
- Thriving in Action (TiA) expanded our team to create and strengthen collaborations across Student Wellbeing. The team is working on several grants and partnerships to increase access to positive psychology and holistic learning strategies (embedded in TiA) for students and staff across our university and post secondary institutions in Ontario.