The Healthy CUNY Initiative (HCI) is a campaign designed by CUNY students, faculty and staff to make CUNY the healthiest urban university in the United States by 2016. HCI seeks to ensure that students leave CUNY healthier and better able to protect their future health than when they entered. Acknowledging the strong connection between educational achievement and health, HCI seeks to reduce the physical, psychological and family-related health barriers that block academic success and graduation. It also works to create campus environments and policies that make healthy choices easy choices. Currently HCI is working to implement CUNY’s new Tobacco Free Campus policy and to promote tobacco cessation, to make healthy affordable food more available and unhealthy food less available on CUNY campuses and encourage use of CUNY mental health services.

Healthy CUNY participants are students, faculty and staff like you. Anyone can participate and anyone can take action. CUNY units that have participated in planning or carrying out HCI activities include the CUNY Chancellor’s Office, Student Services, staff from Mental Health and Wellness Programs throughout CUNY, the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, faculty and students from many campuses including Brooklyn College, Kingsborough Community College, Hunter College, Lehman College, Queens College, the Graduate Center, Hostos Community College and others. The Co-Directors of the Healthy CUNY Initiative are Luis Manzo, Director of CUNY Mental Health and Wellness Services and Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College. The coordinator is Patti Lamberson, MPH. To find out more about Healthy CUNY visit our website at www.cuny.edu/healthycuny or email: plambers@hunter.cuny.edu.