The University Health Center will extend its health education program and offer students an alternative way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
The University’s peer health educators will open the doors of a new resource center at the EMU, handing out Valentine’s Day packets with Hershey Kisses, lubricant and condoms to honor the day’s other moniker: National Condom Day.
Health center Director Tom Ryan said the resource center will reach students who miss out on health education because they don’t go to the health center.
“It gets our health education team right out front,” Ryan said. “We’ve always wanted to have a presence in some of the other areas students
congregate in, and the EMU is one of those places.”
The existing peer health education office will remain in the health center, but the new resource center in the EMU will increase visibility and will more than triple the amount of space for peer health educators to do education outreach, offering brochures and general information, blood pressure screening, cholesterol screening and occasional discussion groups, Health Educator Annie Dochnahl said.
“The purpose of the education
program is to extend health messages,” Dochnahl said. “Being in the EMU will help us do that.”
The resource center will also offer computer assessments of health issues, such as those on body mass index and high-risk alcohol consumption. Dochnahl said she hopes the new location will help the health educators reach more students.
“It’s a chance for students to get information they otherwise might not have tapped in on,” Dochnahl said.
University peer health education practicum student Urva Kuzma is one of three educators whose primary term projects are to get the resource center open and running. She spent Friday decorating the center for Valentine’s Day and National Condom Day, hanging streamers and setting out packets of condoms wrapped in red cellophane.
She said many students don’t realize the education resources available at the heath center, such as books and workshops.
“Unless you go in the health center, you’re not going to know about it,” Kuzma said. “This location and its accessibility hopefully will draw a lot more
people out. We’re just hoping people will feel comfortable enough to come in, to sit, to read books.”
About 240 students have used the health education office each month during winter term so far, Dochnahl said. According to the office’s logbook, the majority of those students received nicotine replacement products or came for condoms, which are “the only form of contraception that also protects against STIs (sexually transmitted infections),” Dochnahl said.
About 15 million new cases of STIs occur each year, two thirds of which are contracted by people 25 years old or younger, according to the American Social Health Association.
Condoms are 85 to 98 percent effective, depending on how correctly and consistently they are used, according to Planned Parenthood.
The University’s health education program gives out about 500
condoms each month, Director of Health Education Paula Staight said.
Staight said the EMU resource center will offer a more comfortable environment for students.
“It’s a convenient place for students to stop in and get information without having to go into a clinic environment,” Staight said. “It doubles their options and helps us get
some more visibility in a more
student-oriented place.”
Dochnahl said the health resource center will evolve over time, eventually hosting movie nights, discussion groups and workshops.
“We have this vision of what it’s going to be,” Dochnahl said. “But we are not sure what will actually manifest.”
The resource center will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for its grand opening today, with regular hours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.