January 8, 2006

Condoms, vaccines and games

The \"Jeopardy!\" theme song plays loudly in a dorm living room at Wayne State University while students meander in for an evening of entertainment -- with a health theme sneaked in. Over the next two hours, they team up by dorms and cheer, scream and compete, answering questions about cold remedies, germs and health prevention strategies. The game is one of Mary White\'s unique ways of getting students to talk about health. In her first year running the Campus Health Center, a health clinic at WSU, she\'s also devised programs like condom bingo (it uses packaged condoms as tokens for the otherwise standard game); hosted slumber parties where female students don\'t really spend the night but do show up in their PJs to ask personal questions in a nonclinical setting. And, of course, there\'s the Jeopardy! game. Students \"sit in lecture halls all day long. So how are you going to get them to come hear another lecture about health?\" asks White, 52, a nurse practitioner who has been in the field 30 years. \"No way. Bor-ING. So you have to come up with some unusual things.\" The mother of a teenager, White is approachable, helpful, and stylishly cool -- she trades conventional nurse shoes for hip flats painted by an artist. But make no mistake, she\'s a nurse first and foremost, with all the loving compassion the term typically conveys. \"Mary is a very experienced nurse practitioner who has a wonderful personal style with students,\" says Barbara Redman, dean and professor of WSU\'s College of Nursing . The article also included a photo.

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