Mississippi State University is the third healthiest university in the nation according to Newsweekmagazine.
Universities are judged in five different categories: sexual health, drug scene, physical activity among students, campus food and student health care.
Bill Kibler, vice president for student affairs, said the categories represented in the rankings are areas MSU has made a priority for some time.
Achieving high health rankings is especially important to MSU because students attending the institution are at an age in which they develop eating and exercise patterns that will stick with them for the rest of their lives, Kibler said.
“How they eat, how they take care of themselves, whether or not they’re committed to keeping themselves in shape, whether exercise becomes a part of their life, whether or not they choose to smoke (are decisions) that tend to carry on for years there after,” he said. “Part of the focus here for Mississippi State is to provide information, support and education to encourage healthy decisions rather than unhealthy ones.”
Several factors contribute to MSU being an active campus, including a bike riding program, an intramural sports programs and the Joe Frank Sanderson Center for fitness, Kibler said.
Laura Walling, director of Recreational Sports, said the Sanderson Center is a great benefit to the quality of life and the health of students and staff.
“We’re one of the primary sources for not only health opportunities but other leisurely opportunities,” she said. “We are doing what we can to make leisure and fitness and health part of all of our students and staff’s lives.”
The department of recreational sports has an indoor swimming pool, spinning classes, a strength-conditioning room and a variety of other healthy programs to assist students, Walling said. MSU’s Student Counseling Services provides excellent mental health services for students.
“We have a strong counseling center that does a lot of outreach,” Kibler said.
Janaé Taylor, staff clinician at SCS, said it is to MSU’s advantage to offer services that help maintain students’ physical and mental health.
“It’s hard for you to do what you need to do in the classroom when you have all these other things preventing you from being motivated,” she said. “We’re a support service. We’re here to help (students) walk across the stage and get a degree.”
The Student Counseling Services offers individual therapy, couples therapy, group therapy and wellness workshops. It also offers crisis intervention services for students who are having emergencies. A clinician is on duty to take walk-ins and emergencies at all times. Within the last three years, SCS has expanded by having a new office location and hiring three new staff members, Taylor said.
 
 
 
Kibler said MSU has been successful in fighting drugs on campus by providing information about the dangers of drug use and abuse, as well as a good, investigative police department to punish students who choose to engage in drug use.
“Our commitment … is to try to encourage responsibility and avoid breaking the law, but for those who choose to (break the law) our track record’s pretty good about holding them accountable,” he said.
Kibler said the Health Education and Wellness unit in the Longest Student Health Center helps to improve the health of students by offering services such as nutrition counseling, tobacco cessation and the “Exercise is Medicine” program.
“We’ve had a professional staff here, and undergraduates that work in that office focused on all aspects of healthy living on the part of MSU students for a very long time,” he said.
The student health center provides a variety of sexual health awareness programs year-round about condom usage, abstinence and having a safe and healthy spring break. The health center as a whole is very effective and comprehensive, Kibler said.
Students have access to physicians, nurse practitioners, a full comprehensive pharmacy, physical therapy and a registered dietitian, Kibler said.
“I would hold up the student health center at Mississippi State against any in the country that I’ve ever seen in terms of the comprehensive nature of what they offer, the quality of their services and the quality of their staff,” he said.
The Outreach and Sexual Assault Services department has been effective in raising awareness on safety and things that would put students at risk, Kibler said.
Walling said it is important for MSU to rank high in terms of health because the state of Mississippi ranks rather low in terms of health.
“I think it nationally gives us an image that, yeah, we’ve been at the bottom of the list, but we are doing things to positively impact (students) and to get things turned around,” Walling said.