Overview

The Lobo Well-Being Initiative is UNM’s campus-wide approach to supporting the whole student. It recognizes that student success is not just about academics. It is about helping students stay healthy, supported, and able to thrive in all areas of their lives. Rather than treating wellness as one single issue, Lobo Well-Being brings together assessments, programs, services, and partnerships across campus to address the many factors that influence a student’s overall well-being. The guiding idea is “Wellness through Collaboration,” and the initiative is hosted at lobowellbeing.unm.edu.

UNM embraces SAMHSA’s Eight Dimensions of Wellness as the framework for Lobo Well-Being because it is clear, comprehensive, and easy to understand. In practice, SAMHSA helps identify strengths and gaps in well-being program design. So naturally, UNM determined this would be a powerful model to frame and assess its own programs. UNM further adapted this framework to the unique wellness framing needs of our university. For example, while SAMHSA considers sexual health as a component of physical wellness, UNM specifically separates sexual wellness education and resources as part of its framework. Additionally, UNM combines intellectual and occupational wellness into one dimension. This better reflects the significant overlap between intellectual curiosity and career preparation, which is interconnected throughout a college education. The Eight dimensions as UNM has adopted them include: emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual/occupational, physical, social, sexual, and spiritual wellness. Each helps explain how wellness intersects in a student’s life.

Through LoboWell-being’s adoption of this model, students are placed at the center of this model. When one area of wellness is impacted, others often are too. For example, when a student struggles to pay tuition or housing costs, their financial stress can impact emotional well-being, increase anxiety, and eventually lead to physical health challenges or housing insecurity, creating a cascading effect across other dimensions of their wellness. Lobo Well-Being further focuses on identifying supports that exist across UNM that encourage development along all eight dimensions, so students don’t have to navigate challenges alone or experience a functional decline/deterioration when one aspect of their life is not optimal.

By leveraging SAMHSA’s Eight Dimensions of Wellness as a foundation, the Lobo Well-Being initiative helps UNM, clearly define what “well-being” means, design programs and services that reflect all dimensions of wellness and build a campus culture that understands wellness as complex, connected, and essential to student success.

No single individual is responsible for the well-being of UNM’ s campus community. For this reason, UNM has established a LoboWell-Being Collective, a steering committee responsible for the direction of the Division’s well-being efforts. The newly formed Lobo Well-Being Collective unites key partners, each representing one dimension of wellness, to align services, reduce silos, and develop coordinated, data-informed strategies. While UNM already has strong programs in every dimension, students experience them as disconnected. The Collective’s role is to build an integrated system of support, improve communication, and provide a structure to centralize the University’s well-being efforts. The Collective enhances the efficacy of partnerships, and seeks collaborations on wellness initiatives and programming.

The Collective is multidisciplinary including personnel with specific expertise, knowledge, and passion to help the University meet its well-being goals. Each dimension of wellness is represented by a leader of their pack demonstrating special care and consideration for the university programming and supports to address their dimension. The committee also includes a student member, a Basic Needs Consortium member, a member of Residence Life, and an assessment professional to provide additional expertise and perspective to the Collective’s charge. Collective membership appointments rotate on a bi-annual basis to account for changing perspectives and to keep the collective dynamic and avoid stagnation.