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The U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)'s latest  published in early 2023 shares data from over 100,000 U.S. students on their experiences with food and housing insecurity. Its findings largely confirm that college students face higher rates of food and housing insecurity than the general population. Data findings report that roughly 22.6% of undergraduates and 12.2% of graduate students experience food insecurity, while 8% of undergraduates and 4.6% of graduate students experience homelessness.

What are Essential Needs? 

Essential needs refer to crucial resources required for a student’s holistic success. Core essential needs, sometimes referred to as “basic needs”, include safety, financial health, access to food and housing, and overall holistic wellbeing (physical, psychological, and spiritual). Essential needs are fluid and often extend beyond this core and may include technology, clothing, childcare, transportation, legal services, and more. For students to be able to focus on their individual growth and academic ambitions, it is imperative that their essential needs are consistently met. 

What is an Essential Needs Ecosystem?

Like a complex network or interconnected biological ecosystem, essential needs are expansive, interconnected, and unique to an individual and their environment. Moreover, essential needs are constantly changing based not only on an individual’s fluid personal circumstances but also on societal factors such as cost of living, social services offered, cost of college tuition, systemic biases, and other external factors that change frequently. Understanding essential needs as part of an interconnected ecosystem or web allows for nuance that avoids ruling out needs beyond what may be seen as “basic” but that are nonetheless necessary for a student’s success. This framework also allows for responsiveness based on present circumstances and changing needs, and demonstrates to students the various levels of wellbeing that contribute to overall success during their time at SMC and beyond as they transition to navigating scenarios as post-college graduates.

What is Holistic Wellbeing?

Similarly to the use of the concept of an ecosystem to capture the various parts that contribute to the whole of an essential needs ecosystem, there are various parts of wellbeing that contribute to the whole for an individual. A holistic model of wellbeing aims to account for the ways in which these parts are connected to inform an overall state of wellbeing rather than exclusively focusing on one part without reference to the whole. For example, overemphasis on physical health may not be a good indicator of overall health or wellbeing. To understand an individual’s holistic wellbeing, there must be attention paid to the physical, psychological, and spiritual parts of their experience.