University students' knowledge and use of health resources

Traditional university students are members of a cohort which is formulating its lifestyle patterns. College students often make unsupervised health-related decisions and (perhaps for the first time) bear the responsibility for those decisions. One of those decisions involves selection and use of health resources. The university, perceived as a community-within-a-community, provides numerous alternatives for the student. The purpose of this article is two-fold: to present a two-part study which investigated the knowledge and use patterns of health resources by students at a state-supported, residential, midwestern university; and to focus on implications drawn from this and other studies for university-based health instruction and the potential for university-based health instruction as a means of promoting high level wellness as a lifetime pursuit.