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Focusing on the conceptualization of a whole university approach, this paper reports on an international qualitative study that explored vice-chancellors' and network members' understanding of and commitment to Health Promoting Universities, examined perspectives on leadership and investigated the Okanagan Charter's potential to catalyse whole university leadership and change. A multi-method qualitative approach was used: semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted face-to-face with vice-chancellors (n = 12) and Health Promoting University co-ordinators who were members of the UK Healthy Universities Network (n = 8); telephone interviews were conducted with a mix of UK and non-UK Health Promoting University co-ordinators (n = 5) and two online questionnaires were distributed to non-UK network co-ordinators (n = 6) and non-UK Health Promoting University co-ordinators (n = 10). Through thematic analysis, a number of key themes emerged that build a new conceptualization of the whole university approach (see Figure 1): building a broad understanding and framing of health; developing a supportive ethos and culture; embedding health into the university and joining up areas of work; focusing on the whole population and facing challenges and seizing opportunities. The study elicited rich and wide-ranging views from multiple stakeholders from universities and networks across four continents, confirming Health Promoting Universities as a truly global movement. Looking ahead, there are clear opportunities and challenges. First, the media narrative of a student mental health 'crisis' has focused universities' attention on 'health', but from a single issue 'illness' perspective. This risks detracting from the whole system Health Promoting Universities approach. Second, even with the Okanagan Charter inspiring individuals and universities, there are still major challenges in translating the rhetoric of whole system approaches into meaningful action within large, complex and culturally diverse organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Quality of life is included in the economic evaluation of health services by measuring the preference for health states, i.e. health state utilities. However, most intervention studies include a disease-specific, not a utility, instrument. Consequently, there has been increasing use of statistical mapping algorithms which permit utilities to be estimated from a disease-specific instrument. The present paper provides such algorithms between the MacNew Heart Disease Quality of Life Questionnaire (MacNew) instrument and six multi-attribute utility (MAU) instruments, the Euroqol (EQ-5D), the Short Form 6D (SF-6D), the Health Utilities Index (HUI) 3, the Quality of Wellbeing (QWB), the 15D (15 Dimension) and the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL-8D). Methods: Heart disease patients and members of the healthy public were recruited from six countries. Non-parametric rank tests were used to compare subgroup utilities and MacNew scores. Mapping algorithms were estimated using three separate statistical techniques. Results: Mapping algorithms achieved a high degree of precision. Based on the mean absolute error and the intra class correlation the preferred mapping is MacNew into SF-6D or 15D. Using the R squared statistic the preferred mapping is MacNew into AQoL-8D. Implications for research: The algorithms reported in this paper enable MacNew data to be mapped into utilities predicted from any of six instruments. This permits studies which have included the MacNew to be used in cost utility analyses which, in turn, allows the comparison of services with interventions across the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years, there has been growing interest in Healthy Universities, evidenced by an increased number of national networks and the participation of 375 participants from over 30 countries in the 2015 International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges, which also saw the launch of the Okanagan Charter. This paper reports on research exploring the use and impact of the UK Healthy Universities Network's self review tool, specifically examining whether this has supported universities to understand and embed a whole system approach. The research study comprised two stages, the first using an online questionnaire and the second using focus groups. The findings revealed a wide range of perspectives under five overarching themes: motivations; process; outcomes/benefits; challenges/suggested improvements; and future use. In summary, the self review tool was extremely valuable and, when engaged with fully, offered significant benefits to universities seeking to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities. These benefits were felt by institutions at different stages in the journey and spanned outcome and process dimensions: not only did the tool offer an engaging and user-friendly means of undertaking internal benchmarking, generating an easy-to-understand report summarizing strengths and weaknesses; it also proved useful in building understanding of the whole system Healthy Universities approach and served as a catalyst to effective cross-university and cross-sectoral partnership working. Additionally, areas for potential enhancement were identified, offering opportunities to increase the tool's utility further whilst engaging actively in the development of a global movement for Healthy Universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]