Posing in front of a Rolls-Royce while wearing only a straw hat and a feather boa — is that any way for a nurse to behave? Absolutely, if it helps gets the word out about osteoporosis and other women's health issues, says Sharon Baker of the Women's Information Network.

Like in the movie, "Calendar Girls," board members of the Women's Information Network posed discreetly in the buff for a health and wellness calendar last year. While the pictures are fun, the information in the calendar is serious business and comes from the latest research.

BARRY WILLIAMS/Special (ENLARGE)

Sharon Baker

Special (ENLARGE)

Sharon Baker (far left) and the rest of the Women's Information Network were photographed wearing nothing but hats and feather boas for a calendar.

"Nurses are educators, either one-on-one or one-to-the-community," said Baker, BSN, MN. "Nurses know and sort through the latest medical information, but it's worth nothing if we don't get the word out to patients."

Baker is a clinical supervisor and nurse practitioner at New Horizons Treatment Center in Rome, Ga., but her passion is running the Women's Information Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women through health education. She founded the network in 1991.

"If women are given enough unbiased data in a way that they can understand, they can make better decisions about their health," she said.

As a patient advocate and educator, Baker has provided that information in fun formats, including events titled "Let the Change Begin: The Midlife Momentum Workshop," "Dinner With a Doctor," "Spring Training" (a four-week community health and screening program) and "No Business Like Bone Business" (a statewide osteoporosis initiative). Baker has yet to meet a women's health issue that she can't address with a conference, health fair, education campaign or other initiative.

Baker began planning events in about 1990 when she was working for Dr. Keith Parmer, a family-practice physician in Rome. At the time, there was a debate about the risks of women older than 35 taking birth-control pills as well as confusion about estrogen and its effects on osteoporosis and menopause.

"Instead of trying to educate patients one at a time, I told Dr. Parmer he should do a workshop," she said. "As a nurse, they don't teach you business, marketing or fund-raising skills, but I had the vision. I could see that workshop and who we could get to speak."

It turned out she also could raise money through education grants and business donations. She asked Dr. Elizabeth Connell, then chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Emory University School of Medicine, and other doctors to debate the issues at the workshop.

"Oprah-like, I encouraged the dialogue with questions," Baker said. "Dr. Connell said to let the cardiologist go first and then she'd tell him why he was wrong.

"It was eye-opening for women to see doctors openly discuss and argue over research. It told them that they could challenge and ask questions of their own physicians."

Like many nurses, Baker began her career working at a hospital. After earning her BSN degree from Southern Illinois University in 1972, she took a job at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

"It was like being thrown to the wolves," she said. "I was an inexperienced nurse and had to look up everything."

She soon switched to weekend shifts at Grady so she could work on a master's degree in women's and children's nursing at Emory University, which she earned in 1974.

After teaching at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Baker moved back to Georgia in 1979 to help start the master's degree OB/GYN program at Georgia State University. She was a clinical coordinator for the master's-level family nurse practitioner program until 1990.

Burned out by the commute from Rome to Atlanta, Baker began working with Parmer's family practice in 1990. In 1994 she founded the Floyd Medical Center's Women's Center and served as executive director until 1996.

She has continued to practice nursing, teach, write and advocate for patients.

Baker is the only health professional on the Georgia Commission on Women, a group that examines the laws and policies of Georgia to determine their impact on the lives of women — including health care, education, child care and domestic violence. Members are appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House.

"Any women's issue — be it domestic violence or incontinence — I get a call, but I really like being out in the community and creating and marketing projects that make health information understandable," Baker said.

Along the way she has persuaded doctors to participate in her programs and has prepared many audiences with health questions to ask their doctors.

For last year's Spring Training health fair in Rome, she enlisted more than 50 agencies to educate attendees and administer health screenings.

"This is not what I thought I'd be doing when I was in nursing school, but there has to be a link between medicine and patients," she said. "Putting people together is what nurses do."