University students’ everyday negotiations of (un)healthy practices

While it is well documented that there is a high prevalence of potentially detrimental health-related behaviors among university students, the social circumstances in which such behaviors manifest are not so well understood. Without this understanding, the effectiveness and impact of health promotion efforts within university settings may be reduced. This paper therefore explores how the social context of university influences students’ negotiations of (un)healthy practices by drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 24 undergraduates from the United Kingdom. We show how students’ manage significant contextual changes as they move through university, balance competing interests, and encounter various social, economic, and environmental constraints when trying to engage in healthy practices during their everyday lives. The empirical findings lend support to the necessity of a “healthy settings” approach to health promotion at universities which considers the specific social context and realities of human behaviors as they relate to health. To that end, implications for health-promoting initiatives that are sensitive to both the university context and to students’ lives are discussed, and suggestions are given for embedding health promotion into university structures and organizations to create environments that best enable healthy lifestyles.