On Wednesday night, I went to an STI panel presented by the ladies of NCNW where health science Professor Deneen Long-White was the lead panelist. The panel was very informative and even had free HIV testing at the end.
The ladies of NCNW opened with a few handouts on STIs, contraceptives, common lines people use to have unprotected sex. Most people could relate to the information. It wasn't too stiff, nor was it too comical in trying to be colloquial.
When Professor Long-White took the floor, that's when the program really started. She has a way of dispersing information that makes it easily accessible to the students. She's very down to earth and had a way of telling the students like it is. The first thing she talked about was STIs and their prevalence among college students. She also passed around a poster with pictures of also the infection looked so we as students know what to look for and when to get help. Some of the pictures were a little graphic, but they had flaps to cover them and it was nothing that we as young adults couldn't handle.
After talking about STIs, Professor Long-White went on to discuss methods of contraception such as condoms and oral contraceptives. She talked about the pros and cons of each and the proper way to use them. For example, there's no point in taking birth control if you don't follow the dosage schedule. That makes it ineffective. With condoms, both male and female, she demonstrated the proper way to use them. She had a few props which garnered more than a few giggles from the crowd. The female condom was a new sight to many people. They had heard of it but never seen it. So it caused a lot of reactions among the crowd, even more so than the finger condoms she pulled out. Although some of the information wasn't new, a lot of it was. The session was very informative. All in all, it was a great presentation.
