Six Penn State students involved in the HIV/AIDS Risk Reduction Program through University Health Services (UHS) traveled to Tampa, Fla., over the weekend to discuss their strategies with other schools at a national conference.

Penn State was one of six universities to receive a grant from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators to develop innovative approaches to HIV/AIDS reduction. Each group designed and developed its own health awareness program.

"The purpose [of the conference] was to share information and strategies so we know what's going on at other schools and they know what's going on here, and then we can find the best approach for campus HIV/AIDS prevention," Beth Hardy (junior-economics), Global AIDS Initiative president, said.

She said the discussions at the conference mainly focused on the importance of students' health and ways different campuses can achieve their health goals.

"It was a nice opportunity to share approaches with other students at schools with different settings," Hardy said.

Ellen Nagy, UHS marketing manager, said the program was developed with the help of health educators as a media campaign to make students more aware of HIV and the necessity of using a condom when engaging in sex.

"We hope the publicity [of this conference] will help other students be more aware of HIV and that the students who worked so hard will get some recognition," Nagy said.

Hardy said the group has been doing outreach prevention programs on campus.

"We're trying to raise awareness of the disease and the resources students have available to them through the media, direct outreach and student groups," she said.

Ryan Collins (sophomore-microbiology) said the group designed the "banana posters" seen around campus, which provide statistics and facts about resources available to students.

The group also came up with the idea of free condom distribution in Beaver Canyon and created the posters about HIV testing that are displayed inside CATA (Centre Area Transportation Authority) buses, he said.

"I think the posters have had a big effect, and we're working on creating some more posters on campus," Collins said. "We want to get people thinking about [HIV/AIDS] and talking about it, because it has certainly affected our generation."

The students also held an event at which people stuffed teddy bears that were sent to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation in Washington, D.C., he said.

Groups from three of the six universities that received the grant attended the conference in Tampa. Along with students from Penn State there were students from Northeastern Illinois University and Prince George's Community College in Maryland.

Katie Koehler (sophomore-kinesiology) said the groups started out by doing several ice-breaking activities to get to know each other.

"The whole point of the conference was that they wanted us to feel really comfortable with other schools so we can share ideas with them," she said.

Koehler said the group went over its ecology model, which looked at the behavioral and organizational aspects, physical settings and social climate of the community, which members used to implement their campaign.

"We found that other schools implemented projects similar to ours," Koehler said.

The other three students in the group from Penn State were James Hess, Stephanie Sharp and Betsy Donaldson.

Hardy said the group administered surveys at the beginning of 2004 and found that the majority of Penn State students knew very little about the disease.

According to the survey, 50 percent of students didn't use a condom during their last sexual act, which is "a disturbingly high number," Hardy said.

"We'll be taking another survey at the end of the semester to give us some idea of how we're doing in terms of informing people and how people have changed their habits," she added.

Collins said that increasing condom usage as part of the program would be "a big plus."

"We're trying to get rid of the stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS and make people become comfortable talking about condom usage and issues like AIDS with their sexual partners," Koehler said.