The Pulse A Day in the Life of Martina Mull i n Martina Mullin leads the Healthy Trinity initiative which seeks to embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across administration, operations, student experience, services and academia What does your day-to-day job entail? Healthy Trinity is a champions-based initiative, that means I’m open to working with any Trinity students or staff with a good idea for promoting health. I might find myself meeting students completing a capstone such as two Business Economic & Social Studies (BESS) students with whom we held an event on Sustainable Personal Protective Equipement (PPE) here in College Health last year. I might be working with Catering to increase the fibre on people’s plates e.g. we have Cornucopia (vegan restaurant) pop-ups on campus. Or I might work with colleagues to use Living Lab data to inform policy e.g. the Smarter Travel group made this submission on the Dublin City Transport plan with partners across college. How closely do you work with the School of Medicine? I get incredible support. I worked with Professor Shane Allwright on my first foray into upstream health promotion, Tobacco Free Trinity. It took six years but working with Shane, Professor Catherine Hayes and others has led to a 79% reduction in observed smoking on campus. Professor Susan Smith is the academic lead of Healthy Trinity and we’ve recently had Healthy Trinity 2030 included as one of three targets in Trinity’s Sustainability Strategy. Other formal partners include academic staff and professors: Catherine Darker, Donal Wallace, Anne-Marie Bennett, Cuisle Forde, Brendan Kelly, Emer Barrett, Jo-Hanna Ivers, Joe Barry. I fear this reads like an Oscars speech. I also get lots of ad-hoc support. And I work with Paul Spiers’ second medical students most years. The School of Medicine is very supportive. Can you give us one example of the work that Healthy Trinity is doing to embed health into students’ lives? Our tobacco group surveyed vaping prevalence in Trinity with second Med students. An academic paper is due to be published soon on it. Suffice to say, Trinity students vape a lot. Those data informed submissions to government consultations on behalf of Trinity recommending a vape phase-out. Concurrently, we run Trinity’s first ‘stop vaping’ courses with the HSE. It is grim watching students struggle with addiction to a product that harms people and the planet. We also had 49 Business students design anti-vaping campaigns that made it obvious young people hate vaping too. I’m delighted the government has just announced they will ban disposable vaping. I think this example shows how low-visibility, upstream action can embed health in students’ lives. Hopefully soon students will barely remember disposable vapes (though I know industry are already gaming the definition of disposable by adding USB ports and calling them reusable). How is Healthy Trinity addressing population and planetary health? Healthy Trinity 2030 is one of three targets set out in Trinity’s Sustainability Strategy and the Strategy’s ethos is Healthy Planet, Healthy People. Health is generally not incorporated in third level sustainability initiatives and over the coming years, Trinity will test the efficacy of including health in environmental sustainability in a university setting. We have specific tasks like increasing active travel (we have upgraded >1000 bike parking spaces on campus), increasing plant-based foods (45% of students in Trinity are non-meat eaters), reducing consumption of unhealthy commodities that harm the planet and people (we’ve set up a Commercial Determinants of Health Lab that focuses on the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food industries – see article on page 19). There are targets on mental health and complexity (we’re launching advocacy training for systemic change). What one thing could Trinity do to help reduce global warming that will have associated health benefits? I’d like to see the emerging field of Commercial Determinants of Health taught and researched. Although commercial entities can contribute positively to health and society, the products and practice of some commercial actors are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill- health and planetary harm. Students and staff alike seem to really engage with this topic. What’s the best book you have read on climate and health? Grant Ennis recently spoke at a Healthy Trinity event. His book Dark PR is great. - Sara Burke Summer Edition 2024 39
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