Georgetown University’s Health Education Services (HES), which aims to promote the health and well-being of students, will officially launch a new Health Hut in Red Square on Oct. 30. 

Since the tent was damaged in 2011, the HES has been hosting small pop-up events, but now the new Health Hut features an updated kiosk and modern design that will be set up across different campus locations every other week. Its main objective is to spread awareness about important health topics by distributing informational materials, engaging students with games and other interactive activities to increase its visibility on campus.

Tessa Telly, assistant director for Health Promotion in HES, said the reason the Health Hut will move between locations across campus is to reach more students, especially in high-traffic areas.

“The idea with the kiosk is that we’re hoping to pop up in different areas,” Telly told The Hoya. “We talked about possibly setting up at nighttime when students are going out to party, and we might give them water or food, little snacks that they can eat beforehand.”

Telly said the Health Hut will primarily be student-run, adding that peer-to-peer education tends to have a greater impact than when adults provide the information.

“Our team here is all students — they help us come up with the topics, they help us create the handouts that we’ll be giving out,” Telly said. “So students speaking to students, it’s kind of like a peer education kind of thing.”

“It’s all student-run with me in the background just trying to make sure that we meet students’ needs,” Telly said.

Amelia Verbrugge (SOH ’27), a student program assistant for HES, said that another goal of the hut is to increase the awareness of HES, so students know they can turn to the program for resources and support.

“A lot of people don’t know that health education provides free pregnancy tests or consultations related to sexual assault and sexual violence,” Verbrugge told The Hoya. “Just knowing that we’re resourced on campus and have it on a list of people that students can reach out to for support is a goal of ours.”

Verbrugge said HES will tailor the topics the hut covers to current events and campus needs, similar to what HES has done with tabling in the past to bring attention to key issues such as stress, mental health, anxiety, depression, sexual health, alcohol and drug use.

“We did one on self-care a couple weeks ago where people put up different ideas for ways they could prioritize self-care, and we provided fruit to make your own fruit bowls, because it’s kind of part of self-care,” Verbrugge said. “We’ve also touched on other topics like sleep and loneliness and relationships and anything related to health or wellness.”

Shay Montgomery (SOH ’26), another student program assistant for HES who helped design the hut, said the HES plans to have themed iterations.

“For our first Health Hut, we are doing a pop-up for Halloween, and one of the main things we will be talking about is ‘Leave No Hoya Behind,’ which is the idea that when you go out with your friends, don’t not make a plan or leave your friend at the bar, because we know that a lot of people go off campus,” Montgomery told The Hoya. “People need to be safe, especially off campus because you don’t know who else is out there.”

“We will be talking about measuring your drinks, knowing what’s in your drinks and keeping an eye on your drinks. We will also be giving out Gatorades, granola bars and labeled shot glasses because a lot of people overpour when it comes to liquor,” Montgomery added.

Telly said that HES hopes to foster a culture of wellness on campus and among students.

“What we’re hoping to do as an office is to create a culture of wellness, so we want to have students see wellness-related things in different forms and mediums throughout campus,” Telly said. “So the more you see wellness-looking things, the more you feel, ‘Oh, this is something that Georgetown students do,’ and so you want to be part of that.”

“Then hopefully it becomes easier for other students to engage in wellness behaviors like exercising, eating healthy, hydrating, limiting alcohol use and all that kind of stuff,” Telly said.