Brain Health Basics
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Brain health is how well your brain helps you think, feel, move and connect with others. Rooted in the World Health Organization's definition, brain health overarches mental health, physical well-being, and performance and includes your ability to focus, manage emotions, make decisions and handle stress. Brain performance is your ability to show up every day and thrive regardless of what's going on in your life.
Components of Brain Health
Clarity
Ability to think deeply and strategically and to create new opportunities and solutions.
Connectedness
Capacity to enjoy fulfilling experiences and maintain meaningful relationships.
Emotional Balance
Facing challenges and adversity while remaining productive and capable.
The Brain Health Prize competition is a chance to boost your own brain health. You can: sharpen Clarity by coming up with novel ideas and solutions, strengthen Connectedness by working on something meaningful with real purpose, and improve Emotional Balance by rethinking how you handle stress.
Brain Health is Trainable
Most people only think about their brain after something's gone wrong: an injury, a diagnosis, the start of decline. But decades of neuroscience tell us that the brain is one of the most modifiable parts of the body and can be strengthened throughout the lifespan, regardless of age or starting point.
Defined by the Collaborative
The Brain Healthy Campus Collaborative brings together Center for BrainHealth, Hilarity for Charity (HFC), RADical Hope, and Waves to help build brain-healthy campuses across the U.S. Together, we equip students with resources, mentorship, and opportunities to strengthen brain health and drive campus-wide change.
Each member of the Collaborative approaches brain health from a different lens.
Center for BrainHealth treats brain health as multidimensional and trainable. It encompasses your ability to think clearly, manage emotion and stay connected to others throughout the lifespan.
Hilarity for Charity approaches brain health through daily habits, sleep, nutrition, movement, and emotional well-being as a form of prevention.
RADical Hope focuses on the connective and emotional side of brain health: building resilience and breaking down isolation that keeps young people from asking for help.
Waves brings a rhythm-based lens to brain health, using neuroscience-backed tools to help people find and protect the routines their brain runs best on.
The Collaborative agrees: your brain isn't fixed. Small, intentional habits, practiced consistently strengthen it, at any age and regardless of starting point.
Brain Health in Daily Life
Living a brain-healthy life manifests as small daily habits and attitudes that compound into huge benefits over time. Here are some of our favorites!
Center for Brain Health
Take a Brain Break
Short, tech-free pauses give your brain space to reset, restoring focus instead of running it down.
Hilarity for Charity
Protect Your Sleep
Quality sleep lets your brain repair and consolidate what it learned that day — treat it as non-negotiable.
RADical Hope
Reach Out, Don't Isolate
Talking to someone you trust builds the connection and resilience that carry you through hard moments.
Waves
Protect Your Rhythm
Your brain runs best on a consistent routine
— find yours and guard it.
A Brain-Healthy Future for Every Campus.
We believe every college campus should be a place where brain health is supported – for the students learning and the faculty and staff who make that learning possible. The Brain Health Prize helps build that future by empowering students to lead change, one idea and one campus at a time.