Health | Student blog

Let’s talk about women’s health

Student Communications | 5 March 20265 March 2026

Women’s health is political. You only have to glance at the news to see debates and discussions on a whole range of issues directly related to women’s health – reproductive rights, maternity care, the gaps in research and funding.

All of this means there’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there. That’s why it’s so important that you do your own research to look after yourself, prioritise your health and advocate for yourself.

To mark International Women’s Day 2026 we’ve pulled together some of the most important topics that you should be thinking about.

What can you do to look after your health?

Register with a GP

It sounds simple, but getting registered with a GP is often something people don’t think about until they need to book an appointment. UWE has a health centre which is open to all our students, no matter which campus you study at.

Contraception and sexual health

This is an area where there’s a huge amount of misinformation online. Protecting yourself from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections is so important, and if you have questions or concerns then it’s vital you get your information from a valid, qualified source. Firstly, speaking to your GP or surgery nurse is an obvious start, but there are reputable websites where you can find out more information.

The Lowdown: A Women’s Health Review Platform – people rate their opinions on different methods and discuss their own experiences on certain types of contraception.
Contraception Choices – this has a really nice visual tool which shows the likelihood of pregnancy on all methods of contraception. The information on this site is also approved by the College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare so the information is trustworthy.

Periods and hormones

The NHS recommends tracking your cycle to understand what your hormones are doing each month. Not only does this allow you to get in tune with your body, but it helps your notice any changes which could be cause for concern or further investigation. Knowledge is power! You can use apps to track your cycle (just be aware of how your data might be being used) or you can keep it simple by making notes in your phone calendar, or even an old-school paper diary.

Routine NHS screenings and vaccinations

There is a programme of routine health screenings and vaccinations which is designed to both protect you from illnesses and also ensure early detection of disease.

All children are offered the HPV vaccine at age 12/13, as it reduces the risk of you getting human papillomavirus, which can lead to an increased risk of certain types of cancer. You can check your vaccine status through your GP and arrange to catch up with any you have missed.
From the age of 25 you will be invited for cervical screening, which checks the health of your cervix and helps prevent cervical cancer.
Check your breasts. As with all health-related issues, knowing what is normal for your body is very important. The NHS recommends that everyone checks their breasts or chest around once a month, so you have the best possible chance of noticing any changes.

Drugs and alcohol

UWE Bristol’s specialist drug and alcohol practitioner Becky Risley says that due to the male-dominant focus of most drugs research, the evidence on the specific risks for women remains limited, meaning harm reduction advice may not always fully apply to them. However, we do know that women typically reach high blood-alcohol concentrations than men, and appear more vulnerable to MDMA-related complications.

This makes it especially important that you measure your dose, stay hydrated and avoid feeling pressured into keeping up with others.
In our recent survey, 26% of female students reported using drugs occasionally, compared to 18% of male students. The good news is that these students told us they were more likely to engage with harm reduction advice and seek support when they need it.
Check out the UWE Drug and Alcohol webpage for information and guidance on reducing risks.

Mental health and emotional wellbeing

Around one in five women have a mental health condition, and there are some societal issues which can put women at risk of poorer mental health than men. All of this means it is important you have awareness of your own mental health, the things you can do to look after yourself, and how you can access support when you need it.

The Wisdom app is your go-to place if you’re feeling stressed, anxious or you just need a little extra support. You can chat with a qualified counsellor anytime through live chat, video call, phone or WhatsApp, and there’s also self-help tools.
Every Mind Matters is an NHS campaign focusing on mental health, and includes specific advice and support for young people.

Healthy relationships at university

Student Communications | 14 October 202514 October 2025

For many students, university life offers a lot of new experiences, including new relationships.

You will meet new romantic partners, new course mates, flatmates or new friends — as well as experiencing extended time away from old friends, partners or family members. You might also be living abroad for the first time or discovering your identity or sexuality.

Relationships can be complicated. Understanding the foundations of a healthy relationship will help you establish positive connections and ensure you feel comfortable, safe and well supported.

Remember, relationships aren’t meant to make you feel bad. You have the right to be respected, be comfortable and be happy in any relationship.

Last year, for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women we spoke to you, our students, to find out what you thought were ‘green flags’ and ‘red flags’ in relationships – behaviour that was appreciated and supported, and behaviour that was unacceptable or abusive.

Your suggestions for ‘green flag’ behaviour in relationships included:

Good communication
Asks for consent
Caring
Emotionally intelligent
Empathetic
Respectful
Supportive
Trusting and trustworthy
Allows room for independence and self sufficiency
Willingness to learn and work through problems

And your examples of ‘red flag’ behaviours in relationships included:

Aggression or anger
Control
Gaslighting into desired behaviour
Disrespect
Jealousy
Possessiveness
Judgment
Deception
Manipulation
Narcissism
Obsessiveness
Sexism
Violence
Poor communication
Lack of empathy
Lack of consent

What to do if you think you’re in an unhealthy relationship

Well done for recognising this. This is often the hardest part! Here’s some steps to help if you think you’re in an unhealthy relationship:

If you’re ready to talk, speak to a friend, family member, member of staff or someone you trust about how you’ve been feeling.
If you feel like you’re in physical danger, call 999 if it is safe to do so. If you’re on campus, dial 9999 from a telephone connected to the University network to reach your campus control room.
Reach out to one of support services, wellbeing services or book an appointment with our Anti-Sexual Violence Service.
Contact a helpline or support services, some are listed under ‘External resources’ at the bottom of our Healthy Relationships page.
Use our report and support tool to flag something that makes you feel upset or uncomfortable.
Reach out to the Student’s Union Advice Centre if you need help finding new halls of residence or private accommodation, or email the UWE Bristol accommodation service.
Build a support network of people you trust and want the best for you.
Try and regain some independence from the relationship.
Prioritise your health and wellbeing.
Don’t let this experience impact other relationships. Think about what went wrong, what you would do differently and what you want new relationships to look like. Create new boundaries or set new expectations for the future in order to maintain your happiness.

How to support someone in an unhealthy relationship

Supporting someone you believe is in an unhealthy relationship should be approached carefully. You may be their only advocate, so try not to force them to do anything or shame them in any way. It is important to remind them that they deserve to feel happy and safe in their relationship and that any form of abuse is not acceptable.

Listen to them and their experiences and try and see the whole picture. Let them know you are there for them and they can trust you. Leaving toxic relationships, ending friendships or making the decision to end contact with family members are all huge, emotional decisions. The person may need time to adjust, come to terms with the situation and even see the scenario the way you do. Help them to seek professional help in the form of local charities, helplines or encourage them to contact UWE’s wellbeing and support services. You’re doing a great thing, well done.

Check out our healthy behaviours web page for more guidance and external resources, as well as our wellbeing services.

Ready for Placement? Don’t forget your vaccinations

Student Communications | 8 September 20258 September 2025

You’ve started your course, you’ve gone to lectures and you have your uniform ready. But don’t forget the most important thing before you start your healthcare placement!

Why get vaccinated?

Getting vaccinated isn’t just about protecting yourself, it’s about keeping everyone around you safe too. There are so many reasons to get your vaccinations before starting your healthcare course. We’ve listed a few below:

1. To protect vulnerable patients and the NHS

Number 1 is a big one! Due to the nature of your roles, you will be in close contact with patients who are immunocompromised, elderly, newborn, or have chronic conditions. Vaccination helps prevent transmitting infections to these vulnerable groups. Hospitals and clinics are also high-risk environments for disease transmission. Vaccinated staff help reduce the likelihood of outbreaks, which can disrupt services and endanger lives.

2. It’s part of the requirements for your course!

When you accepted your offer at UWE Bristol, you agreed to complete your compliance checks like a DBS check and health checks. You agreed to ensure your routine immunisations such as tetanus, diphtheria, polio and MMR are all up to date. Placement providers may require proof of vaccination before students can begin clinical placements, so make sure you’re sorted and not delaying the start of your placement. Putting off vaccinations can cause mountains of work in our placement teams, industry partners, administrative staff and programme teams. We’d really appreciate you giving us a hand and get your jabs sorted early!

3. Professional responsibility

Getting vaccinated is part of our ethical duty of care. Our placement providers and healthcare partners have codes of conduct and professional standards in their commitment to public health that we are proud to align with. Our future healthcare students will all have to undertake pre-employment screening to ensure they are safe to work.

4. Protecting your own health

Unfortunately, we know that university is a hot spot for infectious diseases. If you live in halls or attend lectures, you will be around a variety of people from various corners of the UK and even further afield, which means that bugs are bound to spread. Freshers flu aside, we’ve had historic outbreaks of measles, mumps, meningitis and of course COVID-19 on campuses, as well as local outbreaks in Bristol and South Gloucestershire. So, get jabbed. We don’t want any of our students or staff getting ill unnecessarily!

5. Make the most out of freebies and convenience

We want our students to be vaccinated to ensure everyone stays safe and can continue coming to their classes, placements and place of work. We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to get all the vaccinations you need; we will tell you what you need, give them to you for free and set up clinic days on Glenside campus for you to get them administered at a time convenient to you.

If you are a UK student you can check your vaccination status online.

The age of misinformation

All up to date evidence shows us that getting a vaccination is safer than not getting a vaccination. There is a lot of misinformation online about jabs. If you have questions and want to learn more, do your research using multiple, unbiassed and reputable sources. Always get your health information from trusted sources, such as the NHS or World Health Organisation.

I’m in, what next?

If you are a healthcare student, expect to hear about your Occupational Health checks via email before you start your course. For more information, visit our webpage, or contact us. You can also check your vaccination status online.

Interested in more?

Check out our blog on how you can prepare for your healthcare placement and how to get registered at our University health centre.

Your University Health Centre

Student Communications | 4 September 20251 September 2025

Did you know we have our very own doctors’ surgery right in the heart of Frenchay Campus?

It’s open to all UWE Bristol students, no matter which campus you’re studying at.

You can stay registered with us for your whole time at university, which means you won’t have to worry about finding another doctor as you move in your second and third year.

Plus, as we work in partnership with The Old School Surgery in Fishponds, registering with us means you’ll be automatically registered with them too. Effectively you’re getting two doctors’ surgeries for one!

It’s easy to register online and registering now means that we’ll be able to get your records from your previous GP so that we’re ready to treat you if you need us. It also means you won’t have to worry about going through the registration process or finding a walk-in centre when you actually need to see a doctor – you can just book an appointment with us without all the extra hassle.

And don’t worry – you can still see your previous GP if you go home for the holidays. You’ll just need to see them as a temporary patient. It won’t affect your registration with us in Bristol and you can easily re-register with them if you move back home once you’ve finished your course.

So why register with us?

We make it really easy for you to book appointments that fit around your lectures – you can do it online using our Klinik access system. We offer routine appointments booking up to two weeks in advance, however, if you have an urgent medical need we also offer same-day telephone calls or face-to-face appointments once your Klinik form has been triaged.

We have a vast clinical team based at the Health Centre, consisting of GPs, nurses, mental health nurses, phlebotomists, first contact physiotherapists, sexual health nurses and clinical pharmacists. The clinician you see or speak to will depend on the symptoms you are experiencing following your Klinik form being triaged.

We offer all of your standard GP services, including appointments, blood tests, travel vaccines, sexual health advice and free chlamydia screening kits.

We can arrange your MenACWY vaccination if you are in your first year and under the age of 25, which protects you against four different causes of meningitis and septicaemia. If you didn’t have it before you arrived we really recommend that you have it.

The Health Centre works in partnership with the University’s Wellbeing Service, offering you support for your mental health and wellbeing. We’ll refer you to other services in and around Bristol where required, to make sure you get all the medical help you need.

Remember that some common minor health concerns like coughs, colds, hayfever or an upset stomach don’t need to be seen by a doctor, unless they last for more than a week. Pop in to talk to your local pharmacist for advice – they’re experts who can recommend certain medications that you can take without a prescription. If the doctors’ surgery or pharmacy is closed, you can call NHS 111 for urgent medical advice.

If you’re an international student our healthcare system may be different to what you’re used to – don’t worry, we’re here to explain everything you need to know and can provide a translator. Most services such as GP consultations and emergency treatment are free for everyone. You may need to pay for prescriptions, dental treatment and sight tests – although most students can get these at a reduced cost or free (just complete an application form). Doctors’ surgeries don’t provide eye tests or dental check ups – you can find an optician or a dentist through the NHS website.

Remember, we’re here to help you so that you can get on with your studies and fully enjoy your university experience – so register with us now!

Let’s focus on mental health

Student Communications | 9 November 2023

We all know how important the topic of mental health is, and it’s particularly important for uni students.

You might be living away from home for the first time. Trying to juggle your academic studies, socialising and earning some money. Experiencing feelings of overwhelm, stress and loneliness.

All of this means that UWE needs to be doing everything we can to ensure your mental health is one of our top priorities.

Which is why we are one of 96 universities across the UK to have joined the Student Minds University Mental Health Charter Programme. It aims to improve mental health support for both students and staff in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Student Minds is the UK’s student mental health charity and the Charter brings together universities committed to making mental health and wellbeing a university-wide priority to share practice and create cultural change.

It means we can work with these other universities to share good practice and make sure we are doing everything we possibly can to improve our approach to supporting your mental health.

You can read more about it in this news article published when we joined the charter programme.

So, what do we need from you? Well, as part of this work we’re asking you to complete an anonymous online survey to evaluate the charter programme and help shape the future direction of this work. The survey is open until the 1^st December 2023.

You can read some further FAQs about this survey below – make sure you check them out before you open the survey.

What is this research project about?

This research is funded by Student Minds. We are exploring how organisations participating in the University Mental Health Charter understand and experience the process. We want to capture this data to feedback to Student Minds and to help them better understand how the Charter is implemented and improve it for future use.

Why have I been invited to take part?

You have been invited to take part because you are a student in an UMHC participating university and your experiences and perspectives are valuable to us in researching and learning about the issues described above. Five universities are participating as case studies, and surveys are being sent to students withing these universities

Do I have to take part?

No. It is your decision whether or not to participate in the research project. You have one week to decide.

What will happen if I take part?

You will be invited to complete an online survey via email, sent to you by the UMHC Staff Lead at your university. By clicking on the link in the email, you will be taken to the survey (which should take about 30 minutes to complete) to talk about and reflect on your experiences of your university and your understanding of the services it provides regarding mental health.

How will information/data be collected?

Information will be collected by Online Surveys.

How will my data be used?

Information collected will be examined and analysed by the research team to provide valuable learning about experiences at universities that are signed up to the University Mental Health Charter.

What measures are in place to protect the anonymity of my data?

Data from these surveys will be compiled into data sets and not attributed to a specific person, but rather compiled data from the university (the surveys are being sent to five participating universities). Surveys are sent out by email by the UMHC Staff Lead and the results stored in Online Surveys are anonymised.

How will my data be stored and what measures are in place to protect its security?

The survey data will be downloaded from Online Surveys, encrypted and stored securely on the UCLan system.

Our data protection guidelines comply fully with GDPR. The University processes personal data as part of its research and teaching activities in accordance with the lawful basis of ‘public task’, and in accordance with the University’s purpose of “advancing education, learning and research for the public benefit”. Under UK data protection legislation, the University acts as the Data Controller for personal data collected as part of the University’s research. The University privacy notice for research participants can be found on the attached link: https://www.uclan.ac.uk/data_protection/privacy-notice-research-participants.php

How long will my data be stored for?

Digital data transferred from paper-based materials will be kept securely for 7 years. As the link to the surveys are sent by email from the UMHC Staff Lead at your university we will not be storing your contact details.

Who will have access to my data?

Three researchers from UCLan will have access to the data.

Will my data be archived for use in other research projects in the future?

No, it will not.

Are there any risks in taking part?

There are no perceived disadvantages or risks involved in participation. If you should experience any distress or discomfort (mental, emotional or physical) or disadvantage as part of the research, you should make this known to the researcher(s) immediately. Should any sensitive subjects arise during survey completion, you can opt out of the study at any time (see ‘What will happen if I want to stop taking part?’) We are not collecting health-related data on participants.

Are there any benefits from taking part?

There are no anticipated benefits to you from taking part. Participants may find the survey engaging and interesting and that they will gain a greater understanding of how they understand the Charter. The results of the survey will also be fed back to Student Minds for their annual report and to help them improve the Charter.

What will happen to the results of the study?

Findings from this research will be published in report(s) which will be made available to participants. They may also be published in journals and, if requested, copies of these articles will also be made available to participants. As explained above, data will be anonymised and not personally attributable to you, and you will not be identifiable from the publicly available findings.

What will happen if I want to stop taking part?

You are free to stop participating at any time by simply closing the browser window the survey is open on your device. You do not need to give any explanation for why you wish to withdraw from the study.

After you click submit the data will be added to the database anonymously, and so it will not be possible to withdraw it, as the data relating to you as you will not be personally identifiable.

What if I am unhappy or if there is a problem?

If you are unhappy with anything to do with the evaluation, or if there is a problem, please feel free to let us know by contacting Dr. Alan Farrier (AFarrier@uclan.ac.uk) and we will try to help. If you remain unhappy, or have a complaint which you feel you cannot come to us with, then please contact the Research Governance Unit at OfficerForEthics@uclan.ac.uk.

The University strives to maintain the highest standards of rigour in the processing of your data. However, if you have any concerns about the way in which the University processes your personal data, it is important that you are aware of your right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office by calling 0303 123 1113.

Who can I contact if I have further questions?

Dr. Alan Farrier (AFarrier@uclan.ac.uk)