Integrating health promotion into the educational mission: a 25-year bottom-up institutional trajectory in a Chilean university.

Although universities worldwide are increasingly adopting health promotion strategies, there remains limited longitudinal evidence on how these initiatives are institutionally integrated and sustained over time, especially in Latin American contexts. This study explores the 24-year trajectory (1999-2023) of the first Health Promotion Policy implemented at a Chilean university, providing rare insights into a long-term bottom-up institutional process. In analytical terms, the VIVE UCN Evaluation Model was applied using the milestones (M), actors (A), processes (P), and challenges (C) (MAPC) framework, a convergent mixed-methods design that combined a qualitative documentary analysis of 47 official and unofficial sources with quantitative analysis using descriptive statistics. The MAPC framework was applied to documents from 1999 to 2023, including policy texts, management reports, and evaluation records, to systematically identify milestones, actors, processes, and challenges shaping the policy trajectory. Findings reveal that community participation and collective ownership were key to the policy's institutionalization, shifting health promotion from isolated initiatives into an educational and organizational commitment. By documenting a sustained, bottom-up experience from the Global South, this study contributes new longitudinal evidence to the field of health-promoting universities. Ultimately, integrating the health promotion policy into the educational mission demonstrates a long-term commitment to creating healthy settings and empowering the academic community to address the social determinants of health-both goals recommended by the World Health Organization for higher education institutions.