Two brave men looked quite comfortable in the sea of women. One was Scott H. Reikofski, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs. The other was health educator Kurt Conklin, of the Health Education Office of Students Health Services. He was manning an information and supplies table.
None of the women-about 70 sophomores and juniors-picked up the health information as they passed Conklin's table on their way in to the ballroom at the Penn Tower Hotel the evening of Oct. 27. The information included brochures on nutrition for vegetarians, safer sex, no sex, alcohol and sex, HIV testing and resources, athletic programs on campus, and urinary tract infections. The supplies-a basket filled with male and female condoms and lubricants-however, did a brisk business.
But when the program ended, the brochures traffic picked up.
Such was the effect of a roundtable discussion and video brought to Penn by the U.S. Public Health Service's Office on Women's Health (PHS OWH) within the Department of Health and Human Services in conjunction with Penn's Panhellenic Council, Student Health Education Services, Greenfield Intercultural Center and Women's Center.
The video, "Get Real: Straight Talk About Women's Health," shows how poor lifestyle behaviors-such as smoking, drinking and eating disorders-could increase women's risk of premature death and disability by as much as 50 percent.
Most women died at 30 or 40 years old at the turn of the century, said program creator, Dr. Saralyn Mark, when she introduced the film. Mark is the senior medical advisor at PHS OWH. Now, women's life expectancy is 79 years. But more than 50 percent of death and disability is caused by lifestyle decisions.
"You have choices that can prevent disease," she said. "You have the opportunity today to make health choices that affect how you look and feel far in the future."
Mark spoke about how women's health has fought its way to the top of the public agenda. "Four billion dollars will be spent on women's health this year alone."
Following the film, the women discussed its impact on them-"powerful," "scary" and "thought-provoking." They were shocked by the breast cancer segment and by the elderly woman who described the painful, crippling progress of her osteoporosis from age 40.
But most of the roundtable discussions, each led by a student serving as a discussion leader, focused on sex and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
With Mark, two Penn Student Health doctors-Michelle Berlin and Janice Asher-answered questions posed by the discussion leaders representing each table. The delegate method served to preserve anonymity for the students.
"This is a really bad era for having stupid sex," said Asher, director of Women's Health at Penn's Student Health Service and clinical director of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility. Stupid sex was the kind that made you say "yecchhh" when you woke up the next morning, she explained. She was answering a question on the number of sex partners a woman could safely have in the era of AIDS.
Most of the women who attended the program were sorority members who had heard about the program through Panhellenic Council publicity, but some heard of the program from on-campus peer health groups like GUIDE (Guidance for Understanding Image, Dieting and Eating) and STAR (Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape) or from posters around campus. Panhel invited students from neighboring schools, but few came. Drexel was represented.
Many of the questions focused on patterns on the Penn campus-What kinds of and how many STDs do you see at Student Health? What drug abuse do you see the most?
The answers were a lot of HPV (genital warts), gonorrhea and herpes. Alcohol and cigarettes-any kind-were the most common drugs. And eating disorders were common at Penn, but probably no more frequent than elsewhere.
The doctors used the answers to direct students to safer behavior. Asher chastised the students for not taking their general diet seriously, for not getting enough sleep and for not using simple stress reduction techniques like exercise. Berlin, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the medical school, and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital, urged the students to see a general doctor for a check-up.
The roundtable discussions are a PHS OWH effort to improve women's health, and Penn is the fourth university to host the program. Others hosts include the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Ohio State University in Columbus.
Mark said the program was really give and take: the evaluation forms and student questions would help shape the landscape in women's health and health policy.
"We're writing a new national prescription on women's health," she said.
Return to Compass Features for November 4, 1997