By Jolie Zhang ’26
In an effort to address the growing concern of sleep deprivation among students, the Health Center has launched a new initiative entitled “The SLEEP Contest.” This competition is part of a larger contest series that aims to tackle health-related topics relevant to campus life. To encourage students to participate, the Health Center awarded contest winners prizes related to the topic at hand. For instance, winners of the SLEEP Contest won a pair of sleep headphones.
The overarching goal of the series is to instill and promote healthy habits within students’ daily lives. By focusing on topics that directly impact the wellbeing of the student body, the Health Center hopes to provide valuable information and support.
As such, the SLEEP contest aimed to educate students about the importance of establishing consistent sleep schedules. Director of Nursing Ms. Karen Klein shared, “Recently, kids are coming in, and they are talking about things that are affecting them, and sleep is always a big issue here.”
Recognizing the significant impact of sleep on overall health and academic performance, the Health Center hopes that this initiative will empower students with the knowledge to make informed decisions about their sleep habits and, by extension, their overall wellbeing.
To promote student engagement in the contest, the Health Center set up a simple participation process where students can enter the contest by writing their names on a piece of paper and placing it in a designated box in the Health Center’s waiting room.
Posters in the waiting room provided additional information on the contest and offered practical tips for improving sleep quality. Some of these tips included: limiting light exposure, establishing a consistent sleep routine, limiting caffeine intake, avoiding looking at screens before bed, and creating a calming bedtime routine.
The primary objective of the SLEEP contest was not only to raise awareness, but also to implement lasting behavioral change. “We wanted to reach the students through an educational way,” Nurse Klein said. The Health Center hopes that students will take away strategies to improve their sleep.
In the future, the Health Center plans to cover other topics such as colds and flus, staying healthy in the colder months, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in future contests. By fostering broader ideas and providing valuable information, the Health Center is striving to create a healthier and more informed student body, one contest at a time.
