CAS Presents Revised Standards for Clinical Health Services and Health Promotion Services

Standards for Clinical Health Services (CHS) and Health Promotion Services (HPS) were recently revised and released by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education.

The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) has released revised standards to provide direction for Clinical Health Services (CHS) and Health Promotion Services (HPS). CAS, composed of 43 collaborating professional associations representing over 100,000 professionals in higher education, has developed standards and guidelines for 44 functional areas, and rooted them in the scholarship and work conducted within their respective fields. The new standards delineate expectations for educators in the related functional areas and are additions to the ninth edition of the CAS Professional Standards for Higher Education.

Since the last revision, the Clinical Health Services (CHS) standards have undergone several conceptual changes. MJ Raleigh, Director of Counseling and Testing Services at UNC Pembroke, and chair of the CHS Standards Revision Committee, speaks to these changes, “this revision focused more on incorporating learning and development outcomes and exploring the capacity of health services determined by staffing, space and funding.”

In addition, Raleigh details the addition of “the behavioral intervention team piece for the first time”, recognizing that “health services frequently sits on these boards but there are not guidelines for this. We encouraged health services staff to attend and be mindful of the critical lens they bring to threat assessment.” These revisions reflect current practice, and are noted in both the CHS standards and Self-Assessment Guide.

Similarly, the HPS standards received both conceptual and rhetoric-based changes. Dr. Ann Hower, Director of the University of Michigan Office of New Student Programs, and chair of the HPS Standards Review Committee notes that the revisions “reinforced that the primary mission of HPS is to improve health for entire student populations.” As a result, the revised standards include more intentional reference to population-level impacts and population-based health outcomes, as well as concepts such as “reducing health disparities” and “promoting health equity.”

Dr. Stacy Andes, Director of Health Promotion at Villanova University, and functional area expert for both sets of revised standards says of the HPS revisions, “the revised HPS standards are aligned with other accepted standards of practice in the field, are grounded in the practice of prevention, and embrace the socio-ecological model.”

She further elaborates on their relevance in the field, “CAS is recognized and valued by our colleagues in higher education, and the HPS standards may be the only exposure that someone may have to understand the purpose and function of our work. I believe that these revised standards put HPS in the best possible position to move beyond program management to facilitating healthy campus communities.”

The revised Clinical Health Services and Health Promotion Services standards and Self-Assessment Guides are available for purchase at  www.cas.edu.

Please contact CAS executive director Marybeth Drechsler Sharp ([email protected] or 202.862.1400) with questions and media inquiries.