The Iowa State Student Health Center is conducting a survey to determine the health needs and concerns of students.

The survey, sent randomly to 200 ISU students, will help the Health Center to improve the convenience and quality of student health care, according to Dr. Robert Patterson, director of Student Health. An additional 500 surveys will be distributed primarily to students who visit the Health Center.

“We want to know how frequently students need services and where they usually go to get them,” Patterson said. “We also want to know what types of things students are doing to take responsibility for their own health … and where do they get their information?”

He said student perceptions don’t necessarily match what professionals believe are the real concerns. Students are not as concerned about things like high blood pressure, alcoholism and smoking as they should be.

“It’s interesting to look at this, because those are the important issues from a health standpoint,” Patterson said.”There aren’t many 20-year-olds concerned about cholesterol. They are more concerned about body image, appearance and social safety.”

He said that relationships and self-esteem are important issues for students at ISU. “Self-esteem is central to how well people take care of themselves,” he said. “Sexuality issues in this population are very important. People are often experimenting and finding themselves and taking risks in that area as young adults.”

He said the overwhelming health threat to college students is alcohol consumption. It is central to many of the health issues of students, including sexuality and relationships. Patterson said he looks at the survey as a source of information about addressing the lifestyle issues that affect students.

“We did a study in 1984 of what people knew about the Health Center and where they got their information,” he said. “But there wasn’t much about them, or about us.”

According to Patterson, prevention is the best medicine.

“The glib definition of what the Student Health Center does here is to put out fires — to take care of people when they sprain their ankle, get strep or mono, or whatever,” he said. “But our mission is much greater than that. It is to deal with people’s lifestyle issues as they impact their health, now and in the future.”

Patterson said a study at Harvard University indicated that increasing the number of physicians and clinical services does very little to improve public health. “That’s really true in this country,” he said. “We don’t have a health care system, we have a disease care system. We [the Health Center staff] see an important part of our function to be a health care system.”

The Wellness Center already does fitness assessments and exercise prescriptions for students at no cost, Patterson said. “That’s very popular. We also have a licensed dietitian and a graduate student in nutrition who is dealing with nutrition issues. And there is a part-time graduate student in counseling psychology who is dealing with stress and relationship issues.”

When the results of the survey are complete, sometime after the summer, an analysis of the research will begin, Patterson said.

“It will give us some information on which we can plan our health education efforts,” Patterson said. “It will have an effect on programming. I would expect that it would mean some validation and strengthening of things we are doing already. In the Wellness Center, we are already addressing one of the important concerns that we know people have and that is their fitness level.”