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One great resource on campus for our students to check in with themselves mentally and physically is the Center for Prevention and Outreach (CPO).
Director of CPO, Kerri Mahoney sat down with us to best explain how the department can be a wonderful resource for our students!
What does the Center of Prevention and Outreach (CPO) provide for our Seawolves?
Kerri Mahoney: The Center for Prevention Outreach or CPO is a department within Student Health, Wellness, and Prevention services that focus on educating, empowering, and connecting students to resources around their health and wellness. We cover the whole spectrum of health and wellness topics from mental health to physical health, alcohol and other drugs, and intimate partner violence. And we educate folks in different ways! We have a great Peer Education Program, we do workshops and trainings and we also do tabling around campus to talk about different topics.
What kind of resources does CPO offer when it comes to stress management?
We have lots of different services and resources! I'll start with our mental health programming. We have different workshops and series that can always be found on SBEngaged. One example would be our Mental Health workshop series, where folks can come in and learn about what self-care looks like and healthy coping skills. We also have our CAPS PALS program, which stands for Pet Away Life Stress, which is an awesome program where our off-campus partners come, usually with dogs (we did have a pig come to campus back in August) and students can have a little place to relax and take their mind off of stressful things.
We teach students how to build the capacity to take care of themselves mentally, to identify, maybe when they're having a hard time. And then we also teach them how to connect with different resources on campus. So for example, when we're talking about mental health, we’ll be talking about our partner, CAPS, our Counseling and Psychological services, as a resource for students.
What about resources outside of stress management?
For physical health, we have a lot of great stuff. We have a robust health products program which includes free menstrual hygiene products, and flu and cold kits because we're coming into that season. We also have things like first aid kits.
In addition to that, we have testing on campus. So we partner with the School of Nursing, for an awesome program that's called Pre-Medical Access to the Clinical Experience or PACE and it's where nursing students will come and do physical health assessments. They check out your sugar levels, your cholesterol, and your blood pressure. So it’s a great way for students to check in with their physical health.
As we approach the last few weeks of the fall semester and head into finals, does CPO offer any programs for students to destress?
Absolutely! We always host a Study Break Cafe throughout the entire week of finals and this year we are extending our hours. From December 11th through December 15th the study break cafe will be open from 12p.m. to 7p.m. in the Union. And folks can stop by to take that break from studying. We're going to have all the health products, we're going to have to go self-care kits like a DIY lava lamp, they can make their own sugar scrub among other things. There will also be free snacks. We're excited for that to return so students can take that break from being glued to their textbooks and come get what they need.
We'll also be partnering with Student Engagement & Activity with their event: Relax in the SAC. That will be on December 8th from 4:30-7:30p.m. And CPO will be there to do a “silly self-care” where students make their own slime. And the whole idea behind that is to teach students that self-care doesn't have to be this set rigid thing. Self-care isn’t just getting your hair and makeup done, it doesn’t have to be this glamorous thing. It can be fun and playful. Maybe it’s just taking that 5-minute break to eat a snack or taking 30 minutes to watch an episode of your favorite show. We want both our students and families to know self-care is just doing something that prioritizes you and your health.
We understand this can also be a stressful time for our Seawolf families. What advice would you give to them?
So first, as a mom, although my babies are not in college yet, I would just remind them, that every parent, every guardian, everyone should practice self-care, in any way they can. And that’s going to look different depending on the individual. It sounds silly but just googling ‘self-care for parents’ can give some great ideas. There are also some really great YouTube channels that can help.
But aside from that, you should remind yourself that you did everything you could to raise this beautiful, brilliant child who is now out in the world; you did a really great job and they’re in college doing their thing! That alone is a huge, huge accomplishment.
How can our families best support their student during these last few weeks of the semester?
I think the first step is just being familiar with what resources are offered to our students. Talk to your student about the health resources on campus and encourage them to look at the services offered by the departments of Student Health, Wellness, and Prevention. Just take a look through their websites. If they have social media, take a look through that as well, to understand what services they actually offer.
And even just being aware when you talk with them. If you're noticing a change in their baseline, if they're expressing to you, they're not feeling great. Maybe they normally shower every day and they now haven’t showered in a week. When you're starting to pick up some red flags that your student's not doing great, that's when we want to be even more active in saying, ‘Hey, There are these great resources to check out, I really think you should take advantage of them.’
To learn more about the Center for Prevention and Outreach, click here.
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