Health & Wellness
Along with the Department of Physical Education for Women, other new University offices sought to improve and protect student health in the early twentieth century. In 1913, U-M formed the University Health Service, an office that oversaw student well-being and provided health care. Students and their families had demanded some sort of University healthcare office in the years before the founding of UHS, so that sick students could access the care they needed on campus without having to disrupt their studies.[1] In 1919, the University Health Service began to administer physical examinations of every incoming freshman, a requirement that the Department of Physical Education for Women had imposed on female students four years earlier. In the early days of University student health care, student athletes were examined and treated along with the general student population. Writing on the occasion of the Health Service’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 1938, physician Harold Diehl reflected, “One of the joys of the Health Service is found in the big, healthy, strapping fellows who come in to be examined for football or track.”[2]
In the 1960s, new interest in student athlete health emerged among medical practitioners and athletic trainers, who sought to improve athlete wellness and prevent student injuries. At the urging of the athletic department, the Medical School, and the University Hospital, U-M created an athletic medicine program to provide specialized treatment to injured student athletes.[3] The Michigan athletic medicine program was the first of its kind in the Big Ten Conference, and also served as a teaching program for medical students and residents who wished to pursue the new field of sports medicine. The program provided preventative care and treatment for varsity athletes, but excluded intramural athletes, who had to seek medical services at the University Health Services, along with the rest of the student body.
Three years after the creation of the Michigan athletic medicine program, the University Health Services conducted an internal evaluation, and found medical services at U-M still lacking. This was particularly true for intramural athletes, who did not have access to the Michigan athletic medicine program. Furthermore, that program—primarily located at the University Hospital—was remote from the athletic practice facilities, which created a barrier to access for many students. As a result, the authors of the survey recommended the creation of an Athletic Medicine Department within University Health Services, which would be accessible to varsity and intramural athletes, as well as the expansion of healthcare facilities on the University’s athletic campus.[4]
[1] University of Michigan Health Service: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, 1913-1938 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 1938), 7.
[2] University of Michigan Health Service: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, 1913-1938 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 1938), 22.
[3] “ ‘M’ Initiates Athletic Medicine Program,” The Michigan Daily, March 31, 1965.
[4] “Health Service Study Committee Report,” May 1968, Folder: Health Service Newsletter, 1969-1971, Box 2, University Housing Records, University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, MI.