Jack Turco: Promoter of "wellness"

Jack Turco is the kind of man who gets up at dawn to coach youth hockey practice for an hour before starting work at 7:30 a.m. The rest of his day is no less challenging. Director of the College Health Service, as well as an assistant professor of clinical medicine, Turco sees patients at the Hitchcock Clinic, teaches at Dartmouth Medical School, administers the student health programs, and sees undergraduates at Dick's House. And often he is back at Dick's House in the evening to participate in specialized clinics with students, to give talks in health and fitness classes, or to lead seminars.

An internship at the Hitchcock Clinic in endocrinology in 1974 was what initially brought Turco to the Hanover Plain. Like many others, he became attached to the area, the hospital, and the College, and he stayed. He was named "Intern of the Year" and appointed to a staff position parttime at the Hitchcock Clinic and part-time at Dick's House, the College infirmary. In 1981, when Dr. Sid Jackson retired as director of the College Health Service, Turco was named the full-time director, while also keeping his part-time position at the Clinic.

What Turco undertook when he added Dick's House to his schedule was the administration of five departments and 50 people whose concern is the health of Dartmouth undergraduates. The health educator, the nurses and doctors at the in-patient and out-patient services of Dick's House, the psychiatric counselors, and the athletic doctors and trainers all report to him.

Dick's House has a special history that Turco is fond of recounting. In 1927, a Dartmouth freshman named Dick Hall suffered a heart attack and died. His parents, wanting to build a fitting memorial to him, created Dick Hall's House "a home away from home" for students who were ill at college. Over the years, it has come to be known simply as "Dick's House."

Some of its services are special too. It is the only Ivy League school where the athletic doctors and trainers report directly to the college infirmary rather than to the athletic department.

Living in the shadow of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, students have access to specialized and individualized medical care when it's necessary. But because of difficulties in scheduling around student commitments at the huge medical complex, Turco has encouraged the creation of early-evening clincs and classes at Dick's House in dermatology, allergies, podiatry, orthopedics, and other sub-specialties that students need. These clinics and courses give undergraduates quicker and more convenient access to sub-specialists than they might get by going directly to the Hitchcock Clinic.

Although it is Turco's responsibility to see that the students who have illnesses and accidents are cared for, his primary goal for the College Health Service is to promote a sense of "wellness" among the student body, to find ways to teach college-age people how to attain and maintain peak health.

Toward this end, Turco has supported several recent developments in health education. For example, four years ago, Beverlie Conant Sloane, health educator at Dick's House, and Nancy Mason, then the exercise specialist at the Dartmouth Medical School, wanted to offer an aerobics class at Alumni Gym in cooperation with the Physical Education Department. Turco is not one to hop on the bandwagon of a fad; Conant Sloane says he required some convincing before supporting their idea. But once convinced that a program combining aerobics, strength and flexibility exercises, and brief lectures about nutrition, stress management, and lifestyle matters would work for students, Turco threw his whole support behind the program. FLIP - for "Fitness and Lifestyle Improvement Program," as this wide-ranging class is called - mushroomed through word-of-mouth advertising from the original 35 participants in the winter of 1982 to 800 people in more than 30 classes during the spring of 1985. Of those, 325 were undergraduate students enrolled in 12 classes at four different levels. FLIP is offered for physical education credit, but many take it just for their own enjoyment. The remaining 475 participants were employees of the College and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, graduate students, and unaffiliated community members. The non-student classes include aerobic exercise, water fitness, senior citizen fitness, and stretch-and-tone classes. The program has grown to such a size that it requires two full-time teacher-administrators along with 25 part-time teachers.

Last spring, the two full-time FLIP staff members presented a paper on the program at the American College Health Association's national conference in Washington, D.C.; they discovered that FLIP is not only special but unique among college health programs.

Another program Turco has brought under the College Health Service umbrella is a "Wellness Questionnaire" which is being developed and put on computer by Dr. Sid Jackson, Turco's predecessor at Dick's House, and Dr. Jeannette Simmons, a health educator on sabbatical at Dartmouth from Harvard. The questionnaire asks lifestyle, health, exercise, stress, and dental questions of the students. The students use it as a self-evaluation tool. After they sign on and answer the questions, they get feedback, explanations, and recommendations in response to their answers. For the Health Service, it is a data-collection tool, regarding the information the students give about their smoking and drinking habits, about stress and risk-taking in their lives, and about their attitudes towards health and their lifestyles. Turco says that he hopes to administer follow-up questionnaires at reunions, to create a longitudinal study about the wellness, illness, and health attitudes of Dartmouth alumni.

Turco also presided over the formation of a "Health Aide Program," in which students learn self-care, cold-weather care, and care of primary injuries. For example, they learn about hypothermia and the differences between colds, flu, and mononucleosis and what to do for each of these.

Classes provided by the Health Service also include "Eating Disorders"; "Health Preparation for Going Overseas," which applies to more than 70 percent of the undergraduates sometime during their four years at Dartmouth; "Family Life Education"; and "An Ounce of Prevention," a course on prevention of accidents and illness.

Because travel and study abroad are major parts of many Dartmouth students' four years in college, Turco is actively pursuing medical liaisons in the major cities of Europe and Latin America. Currently when a student requires medical care in a foreign country, the professor leading the group must try to find appropriate doctors. In some cases, students have returned to the States because proper care could not be found. The liaison doctor would serve as a contact between the College Health Service and the medical community in the other country.

Perhaps the most potentially far-reaching of all Turco's endeavors to date, says Conant Sloane, is his interest in the "Student Alcohol Project." This is a pilot project in alcohol education in cooperation with Project Cork Institute, an alcohol education agency of the Dartmouth Medical School. Initially this program is providing campuswide workshops and publicity campaigns about the nature of alcohol and its effects.

This proliferation of programs illustrates Jack Turco's administrative style. He supports others' ideas and lets them carry projects as far as they can. "Jack's a mover and a shaker," says Conant Sloane. "He gives his department heads independence and authority to develop their own programs."

"Jack has a talent for bringing out the best in people," notes colleague Joe O'Donnell, an associate professor of clinical medicine.

With all of these programs and all the people he must supervise, one might assume that Jack Turco's job is his entire life. Not so.

He is an active parent, sharing the responsibility of raising his children - two sons and a daughter. His wife, who earned a master's degree from Dartmouth, is an assistant director of admissions for the College.

And he loves hockey. As an undergraduate at Harvard he set the ECAC Hockey Tournament record for the most goals scored in one game and his tally of five is a record that still stands. Also, he was the hockey player who scored the decisive goal in the movie Love Story. He still plays regularly, on a Med School intramural team. And he has given significant time to encouraging young people's participation in his favorite sport. He coached at Hanover High for four years and now coaches in the Hanover youth hockey program.

Hat tricks on the ice are nothing new for Turco. But he's extended his triple-threat performance in recent years to off-ice activities as well, with his commitment to his student patients, his community, and his family.

Jack Turco, director of the College Health Service since 1981, stands at the entrance ofDick's House, whose special history he is fond of recounting.

Peggy Sadler is a free-lance writer who lives inLebanon, N.H. Her work has appeared in Savvy and New England Monthly.