Taking care of your health is not that complicated!

Students' health, learning all about access to care

A number of surveys of student living conditions and health show that accessing care can be difficult for students, and that they tend to not use the health care resources available to them. It appears that the key issue is their lack of knowledge of how the health system, the Assurance Maladie and health services work.

The French health system remains fairly complex despite recent efforts to streamline it. In particular, its underlying technical concepts can appear rather abstract: the care pathway, the relationship between supplemental health insurance, mutual insurance, and the Assurance Maladie, the need to update the Carte Vitale, etc. And yet, a number of effective information and assistance programs are available in this area, including some specifically aimed at students – particularly some student communications programs led by mutual insurance companies.

Three key steps

• A media and non-media communication campaign (posters, student press and radio, internet and social networks);
• A peer-to-peer awareness-raising campaign with regular daytime operations in heavy foot-traffic areas on campus and at student events;
• The involvement of voluntary institutions to spread the awareness campaign information and direct students seeking help to the appropriate resources.