Technologies for health promotion of university students: scoping review
Students health occupation; Universities; Biomedical technology; Health
promotion
The impact of the new reality and student obligations in higher education can trigger a
series of problems. Thus, university spaces are strategic environments for the
development of health promotion actions for these students. For this, the use of tools is
important to facilitate approximation, interest and collaboration, especially among young
people. Thus, the objective of the present study was to analyze the technologies and their
contributions to the promotion of the health of university students in the health area. The
study developed a Scoping Review based on the JBI. The following research questions
were adopted: “What are the technologies for promoting the health of university students
in the health area present in the literature? What are the advantages and limitations of
these technologies? The sources selected for the study were: Medline/Pubmed,
Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Web of Science, Latin
American and Caribbean Literature in Health Science, Nursing Databases, Scopus,
Cochrane, SciElo, Education Resources Information Center, Catalog of Theses and
Dissertations by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel,
The National Library of Australia's, Academic Archive Online, Digital Access to
Research Theses, Europe E-Theses Portal, Electronic Theses Online Service, Repositorio
Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, National ETD Portal, Theses Canada and
Google Scholar. A total of 42,294 studies were found and 71 articles were selected for
this research. The studies were mostly published in the United States of America, with
the main methodology being experimental studies. Among the target audience, there was
a predominance of nursing and medicine students, aged between 17 and 40 years.
Regarding technologies, the most predominant was light technology (63.4%), the use of
health education, group training and mindfulness/mindfulness were the most used,
followed by light/hard technologies with (19.7 %) and hard technologies with (16.9%).
The main focus was on students' mental health in addition to their physical health. The
most frequent time of application of the technology was up to eight weeks, being applied
mostly in spaces of the university itself, such as classrooms, outdoors and gymnasiums.
Due to the variety of technologies, the materials used were also diverse. Most of the
studies did not consider the previous assessment of the health of the students, being only
applied to technology. The use of these technologies has shown positive effects in
promoting the health of students in the health area, with an improvement in depressive
symptoms, anxiety, stress, as well as an increase in the practice of physical activities and
also an improvement in the ability to deal with academic stressors. Academic stress
experienced by healthcare students can impair health and performance. Thus, these
technologies are important strategies to be adopted by educational institutions to ensure
the health of their students.