Our Values

Our values reflect UVM’s Our Common Ground. We aim to provide services that reflect respect, integrity, innovation, openness, justice and responsibility.

We know that more than genetics and behaviors create health and wellbeing. Community connections, access to affordable food, housing, and transportation, prejudice, discrimination, and systems of racism and structural inequity all contribute to health.

Respect, Dignity, and Affirming Services

We value you and we affirm you and your identities. From gender affirming care to providing services in affinity spaces on campus to pleasure-based sexuality education, we strive to provide services that affirm your personal experiences.

Respect for the dignity of the individual come first in our services. Our focus on individualized care means that we take your economic, cultural, ethnic and spiritual background into account, as well as your values, interpersonal support systems, and experience as a UVM student.

As a component of this, we support body liberation. We believe all bodies are worthy and all bodies deserve respect. We work to promote the freedom from social and political systems of oppression that designate certain bodies as more worthy, healthy, and desirable than others. Read our commitment to body liberation here. 

Radical Self-Care

We promote radical self-care. Caring for yourself is a way to empower your own sense of wellbeing and preserve yourself in a world that is messy and can be hostile to many identities, communities, and ways of life.

Racism is a Public Health Issue

Structural racism, prejudice, and bias lead to racial inequities in health care and health outcomes for people of color. We are committed to shifting the white supremacist approach and to lead with both our hearts and heads to care for our fellow humans.

We strive to heal our community through the pursuit of social justice and dismantling systems of racism and other forms of oppression.  Social justice is a pathway to wellbeing and is key to our mission of supporting your success at the University of Vermont. See our full statement here.