Cultivate Well-Being is one of the six strategic goals in the Georgia Tech Institute 2020-2030 Strategic Plan. It is essential to our academic mission and to promoting a sustainable workforce that we exercise leadership in advancing employee health and well-being, not only for the positive impact it will have on our faculty and staff but also on the lives of the students we serve if we “put on our own oxygen masks first.”  Well-being is subjective in nature, and cannot be directly impacted by any practice, policy, or program. Rather, institutions of higher education can strive to influence the context, climates, and correlates that are known to be associated with higher levels of well-being. Ultimately, the complex interplay of conditions that contribute to well-being varies from person to person - and can also vary for any one individual throughout the course of their life. This aspect of well-being differs from health and wellness, where activities, interventions, policies, programs, and services designed purposefully – using available data and evidence - to shape individual- and community-level outcomes are more likely to result in a direct impact.

To effectively leverage collective action, it is useful to share common definitions of key concepts in the Roadmaps:

Health is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The definition was refined in 1984 by WHO to include “the extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs and to change or cope with the environment.” And in 1986, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion added that “Health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love. Health is created by caring for oneself and others, by being able to take decisions and have control over one's life circumstances, and by ensuring that the society one lives in creates conditions that allow the attainment of health by all its members.”

Health cannot be fully understood without also considering the social determinants of health, which are defined by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) in the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as “the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks." These determinants can be grouped as follows:

The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) defines wellness as “the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.” The GWI also notes that while wellness is an individual endeavor - wherein each person has personal responsibility for their respective choices, behaviors, and lifestyles - it can also be notably influenced by social determinants.

Further, individuals often confuse or use the words health, wellness, well-being, and happiness interchangeably. The GWI observes, “While there are common elements among them, wellness is distinguished by not referring to a static state of being (i.e., being happy, in good health, or a state of wellbeing). Rather, wellness is associated with an active process of being aware and making choices that lead toward an outcome of optimal holistic health and wellbeing.” Wellness actions are the inputs and well-being is a desired output.

Georgia Tech is utilizing an eight-dimension model for wellness.

Well-Being is a positive state experienced by individuals and societies. Similar to health, it is a resource for daily life and is determined by social, economic and environmental conditions. Well-Being encompasses quality of life, as well as the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world in accordance with a sense of meaning and purpose. Focusing on Well-Being supports the tracking of the equitable distribution of resources, overall thriving, and sustainability. A society’s well-being can be observed by the extent to which they are resilient, build capacity for action, and are prepared to transcend challenges.

Source: Health promotion glossary of terms 2021. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2021. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0IGO.