Together We Thrive
Imagine a future where your doctor prescribed you to engage in two hours a week of mandated social time. Recommended activities include meeting up with friends, laughter, playing games like tag or hide and seek, building pillow forts, starting a local band, or taking a fun class at a local community center.
In today’s fast-paced world, “social time” feels more like a luxury than a necessity. With all the responsibilities and pressures of day-to-day life, it can be easy to slip into isolation. Many of us lose touch with our close friends as we transition between different stages of life. When we leave our home towns to go to college, we often find it harder to stay in touch with the people we care about back home. When we leave college to start a new career, we can easily find ourselves caught up in the rush of making our place in the world that we forget the people who we once shared special times with in college.
Today, our world is more connected than ever, with innovations in technology making it possible to communicate with people across the globe in an instant. Yet at the same time, we are more lonely than ever, with more than 25% of Americans reporting they have no one to confide in.
Social well-being is critical to our overall health. A lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. You are more susceptible to getting sick and can take longer to heal afterwards.
On the other hand, maintaining strong relationships and making time to socialize with your friends, family, classmates, and colleagues, can reduce depression and anxiety, increase empathy and self-esteem, and even help you to live longer.
These moments of connection are more important than we can ever imagine. That’s why part of our mission at the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative is to build a campus environment that promotes positive and meaningful social interactions. This year, our annual celebration will honor the students, staff, faculty and community members that make our campus so special and teach us all the importance of living well together.
On May 9th, we invite the whole campus community to join us in celebrating the 2018 Healthy Campus Initiative Revolution: Together We Thrive!
We’ll explore the intersection of social well-being with music, technology, culture, neuroscience.
- 4:30 p.m. Pre-show with free food, games, prizes, giveaways, and student work
- 5:45 p.m. Live show with performances from Hello Noon, the Monk Jazz Group, and the UCLA Women’s Gymnastics team, and panel discussions on social well-being
- 7:30 p.m. Post-show reception with raffle prizes and free food from Everytable
Special guests include Maria Shriver (Journalist and Author of I’ve Been Thinking…), Chris Meledandri (Founder and CEO of Illumination Entertainment, origin of the adorable minions and Despicable Me), Professor Martie Haselton (author of Hormonal), UCLA students, and more!
The first 1,000 tickets are free! Remaining tickets will be sold for $5 each.
For tickets visit: https://goo.gl/mWN7Dv
For more information on panelists, performers, and program, visit healthy.ucla.edu/revolution/
The Healthy Campus Initiative is a vision of Jane and Terry Semel, and is supported by them.
We have so much to celebrate! Be a part of the movement! #UCLALiveWell
