Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110105

Mary T. Hoban, PhD, CHES, American College Health Association, PO Box 28937, Baltimore, MD 21240-8937, 410-859-1500, mhoban@acha.org

The American College Health Association National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA), is used on campuses throughout the country to gather data from students about health status and health problems, risk and protective behaviors, access to health information, impediments to academic performance, and perceived norms across a variety of content areas including: injury prevention, personal safety and violence; alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; sexual health; weight, nutrition, and exercise; and mental health. Since it's inception in 2000, the ACHA-NCHA has been used to collect data from more than 165,000 college students at 274 institutions of higher education representing various campus sizes and settings. The ACHA-NCHA offers individual campuses the data they need to better understand trends, identify emerging problems, report behavioral norms, identify risk factors to safety and academic performance, prioritize student health care issues, allocate resources for programming, design new programs, and evaluate current strategies. The ACHA-NCHA has also built a rich aggregate data set of important student health indicators, and these aggregate findings from the Spring 2004 survey period (47,202 students at 74 campuses) will be shared in this presentation. In particular, results regarding impediments to academic performance, high-risk drinking behavior, sexual risk behaviors, depression, and sources of health information will be shared, as well as examples of the ways campuses are using NCHA data to set and justify priorities, evaluate programs, and allocate resources.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the top 5 health-realted impediments to academic success, as identified by survey participants.
• Identify 2 trends in self-reported depression among college students over the last 5 years.
• Describe 5 ways that college health programs have used their ACHA-NCHA data for program development and evaluation.

Keywords: College Students, Assessments

Related Web page: www.acha-ncha.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.