On July 16-August 10, 2012, The Center for Population Research in LGBT Health at The Fenway Institute and the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health are hosting a Summer Institute in LGBT Population Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Institute will provide participants with foundational training in interdisciplinary theory, knowledge and methods for conducting population research in sexual and gender minority health. Current doctoral or Masters’ students and recent doctoral program graduates are eligible to apply for one of 18 spots in the program.

To be held over four weeks at Boston University and Fenway Health, the Summer Institute will include several components:

1. A dynamic Cornerstone Seminar in LGBT Health and Social Life that will overview key topics, methods, and perspectives in the interdisciplinary study of LGBT Health
2. Short-course instruction in statistics and quantitative data analysis at the intermediate and advanced-intermediate levels
3. Hands-on training in analysis of LGBT population health data in the Interactive Data Lab.

There is no cost for tuition and participants may apply for free housing* in Boston University dormitories during the Institute. The Summer Institute is funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant number R25HD064426).

Please visit www.lgbtpopcenter.org/training to download the Call for Applications.  Applications will be accepted until April 16, 2012.   For more information, please call 617-927-6348 or email summerinstitute@lgbtpopcenter.org.

You can view blog highlights from Nicole VanKim, from the 2011 Summer Institute. Click here to see all of the great highlights and even a special video for all the Data Lovers.

*There are a limited number of slots for free housing available.  Per grant funding guidelines, free housing is only available to U.S. citizens, non-citizen nationals of the U.S., or those with legal permanent resident status.  No temporary or student visas allowable.  Non-citizens may apply for the program, but must cover their own housing and transportation costs.

Action was the theme as we started our year. First step in January was to participate in a media training by Renna Communications, one you’ll see we put to good use immediately. Then we moved onto electing a new Chair of our Steering Committee; we are pleased to report William Furmanski, a Vice President from American Legacy Foundation, has moved into this role. Our heartfelt thanks go to the outgoing Chair, Dr. Francisco Buchting. He led the Steering Committee wonderfully through the critical startup phase.

In general work we continued pushing our Action Alert to get local advocates to urge inclusion in the $100M of recently awarded Community Transformation Grants. Dr. Scout worked with disparity networks in Minnesota particularly, where they presented a petition with over 2,000 signatures to state officials asking for better disparity population inclusion. We also continued to advocate for tailored disparity ads in the coming $40M CDC tobacco control media campaign. After a few meetings, it looks like CDC is exploring tailoring LGBT ads. We also launched registration and opened the abstract submission process for our coming Tobacco Summit. For the main National Conference on Tobacco or Health, we’re proud to report we worked with others to successfully ensure there will be a plenary on disparity populations for the first time since 2005. Finally we continued to urge Network members to attend the rounds of HHS LGBT health listening sessions across the country.

We ended January strongly, showcasing the Network at the Annual Creating Change Conference in Baltimore MD.  Network Staff along with two Blogging Scholarship recipients, Sophia Isabel Marrero Cruz from Puerto Rico, and Hector Martinez from San Diego manned the Network booth, posted blogs, and networked advancing our mission.  Each year the Network launches an Action Alert at Creating Change, this year we were collecting signatures petitioning HHS to ensure Transgender inclusion in the National Health Interview Survey.  Immediately following the conference Scout and Sophia Isabel Marrero Cruz went to a scheduled listening session with the Office of Civil Rights at HHS. Scout testified about how changes in LGBT inclusion would mean little unless they were promoted at every level (e.g. people won’t know to expect culturally competent care at a quitline). Sophia testified about the extreme violence and access to care problems encountered by trans people in Puerto Rico. We had a huge win setting up additional meetings about Puerto Rico, ultimately over two dozen federal officials met on Monday to discuss the violation of human rights and lack of access to care for transsexual women in Puerto Rico. Click here to read the joint press release on these great meetings or here to see some great follow-up press.

In the weeks following we were on the road again. Gustavo joined Dr. Francisco Buchting in Oakland for a cross-Network meeting with the head of the Office on Smoking and Health to discuss Network sustainability into the next funding cycle. Current outlook is cautiously optimistic. Gustavo was also able to meet with the Advocacy and Data dissemination to achieve Equity for Priority populations on Tobacco (ADEPT) project recipients; A project funded to build the capacity of California’s priority populations to effectively respond to tobacco control and other social justice issues.

In the week following, Scout was in Philadelphia representing TFI and the Network at the first ever White House LGBT Health Conference. While there we delivered the petition from Creating Change about keeping trans data collection moving with over 600 Signatures to Secretary Sebelius’ representative. Read some of Scout’s thoughts on the event here in this Advocate article: White House Holds LGBT Health Conference. We’ll be posting more on our own blog in the near future.

Closing out the month, the Network submitted our annual re-application for CDC outlining our scope of work for the upcoming year, the final one in this award. As many of you may know, one of our major efforts in 2012 will be the 8^th National LGBT Health Equity Summit. Additionally, keeping our focus on sustainability we will also roll out our new Best/Promising Practices model and create papers publicly documenting key areas of Network knowledge

I attended a meeting where proponents of a tax increase on tobacco showcased the importance of tobacco control. If  California Proposition 29, the Tobacco Tax for Cancer Research Act is approved by voter, it will increase the tobacco tax by a $1.00 here in CA. The tax is meant to save lives and prevent teen smoking. In general, I would say that a tax increase would deter smokers and research supports that. Some proven tobacco control efforts have been in the area of prevention, cessation and enforcement. A friend of mine mentioned that he successfully used hypnosis to quit smoking. Another great idea might be breaking down the social view of smoking. When I talk to my friends about smoking, there is a perception that lighting a cigarette is cool. Changing our societal perception of smoking might take some time and effort but it is certainly possible.

Millions of dollars are spent on the consequences of smoking such as cancer research, hospitalizations, needless premature deaths, etc. If we were to spend more money on prevention, imagine what the world would look like. It seems to me that a combination of prevention, cessation and public perception efforts are the least expensive and most effective use of our money.

I would love to hear your opinion!

Good Afternoon,

The Network along with our Summit Planning Committee is pleased to share three exciting announcements with you all.

First | Abstracts Open, Abstract Submission for the 8^th National LGBT Health Equity Summit is now open. Abstracts must be submitted by March 19^th, 2012 at 11:59 pm EST. For more information and to fill out the application form online, please click HERE.

Second | Seeking Youth for Youth Planning Committee, In addition to the Summit Planning Committee the Network is seeking applications from youth age 16-24 to be a part of the Summit Youth Planning Committee. We will be accepting applications until March 9^th and we are looking to select 6-8 youth from across the country  to assist with a youth presence at the summit. For more information please click HERE, and make sure you share the information with your networks, and/or interested youth.

Third | Online Payment and Registration Options Now Available, Online Registration and Payment for the Summit is now available! Click here HERE to register online and HERE to make your payment using our secure eventbrite check out process. Not about the technology? Don’t worry you can still click HERE to download the form, and mail us in your payment and completed registration form.

If you have any question about any of the information provided please feel free to email us at lgbthealthequity@gmail.com anytime.

And, as always, If you want to be the first to receive all of the summit updates directly sign up HERE.

On behalf of the Network and The Summit Planning Committee we all look forward to seeing you at the 8^th National LGBT Health Equity Summit.  More amazing details and updates soon to come.

Hey all you youth activist…

Are you between the ages of 16 and 24? Do you care about health and the LGBT community? Do you worry about the toll that smoking and tobacco is taking on the lives of your friends, family and community?

Join our youth planning committee for the 8th National LGBT Health Equity Summit, Bridging the Gap: Promising Practices in LGBT Health and Tobacco Control in Kansas City, Missouri on August 14th, 2012.

The Summit will have workshops, lectures and talks designed to leave participants with the tools and strategies to advance their movement around LGBT health and tobacco control in their local communities, along with an amazing evening event (details coming soon).

The youth committee will work on coming up with and organizing a youth focused activity for the Summit. Responsibilities will include a monthly planning call (or calls as needed), and a passion to be involved in the summit. This will be a great opportunity to network and make connections with organizations and other youth activists from around the country, meet interesting people, get great planning and organizational experience, represent youth and have fun!

We will be offering a limited number of scholarships for Committee Members to attend the Summit. Also please note that youth under the age of 18 will have to be accompanied by a chaperone.
To fill out the application, please click HERE! Application Deadline is Friday March 9^th at 5pm EST. So don’t waste any time get your application in today.

Adding to the Data About LGBT Cancer Survivors

My organization focuses on the cancer risks, screening rates and survivorship experiences of LGBT people. Until national cancer surveys and registries begin collecting information about gender identity and sexual orientation, LGBT survivors remain invisible within the wealth of data there. As Scout makes repeatedly clear, without reliable information, we are limited, not only in our knowledge, but in our ability to develop fundable programs that address this population.

In the absence of national studies, LGBT researchers have taken it upon themselves to find out what they can.  These studies are usually small and sometimes the results are contradictory.   We need more studies and larger studies.  Still, we are all extremely grateful to people like Judy Bradford, Ulrike Boehmer and Ilan Meyer for their work that helps us put faces and facts on LGBT health disparities.

My opportunity to join their ranks came via an email last August from a total stranger, a heterosexual nursing professor from California State University San Bernadino who noticed that the “healthcare system was doing a crappy job of addressing LGBT patients.”  She had an opportunity to get a small research grant and wondered if someone from my Network would like to collaborate on a study of LGBT survivors.  I said simply and swiftly, “YES!”.   

I have still never met Dr. Marilyn Smith-Stoner in person, but our survey is up and running and we already have plans to present the results in October at the 5th Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved in San Diego.  I guess I’ll finally meet her in the hotel room we are going to share.

Our study focuses on the moment of a cancer diagnosis.  We are interested in who was in the room with you, who made up your support team, were you out to your provider and, if so, did that affect your treatment.  We need a large and diverse group of people to take the (short and anonymous) survey, so we can see if there are differences by geography, race, cancer type, gender identity, age, etc.

We have gotten the word out through our Facebook page, twitter, a Huffington Post blog, print ads in LGBT publications and our newsletter.  We are now asking that you push this out as far and wide as YOU can, engaging your own networks.  The more people who take the survey, the more we will learn.

And, if anyone needs a tad more encouragement, participants can enter a raffle to win one of ten $50 gift cards.

If you have gone through the challenge of a cancer diagnosis, please tell us your story.  Good or bad, we need to know.

You can find the survey online here.

This Spring, HHS will be adding an LGB question to their premier survey, the National Health Interview Survey. This is a great step forward in ending discrimination.

Unfortunately, the plans for adding transgender questions seem stalled. We asked HHS to take more community input and they did – now it’s time to get the development of trans questions back on track.

Trans health disparities are profound. Trans people smoke more, have less insurance, higher rates of suicidality, and report frequent medical discrimination.

These problems remain invisible as long as trans people are not counted in surveys.

We are asking HHS not to leave any members of our community behind and that the process is restarted to make sure questions about trans status are tested and added to all of the key health surveys in 2012.

Click HERE to sign the petition!

Please spread the word! You can send people to the direct link: bit.ly/hhspetition

We kicked off the campaign at Creating Change this year and would like to send out a huge thank you to all of the attendees who posed for photos and signed the petition!

“Las palabras alinean nuestro pensamiento, mientras las                                                                                                                                                       acciones mueven las energías. Si queremos tener resultados positivos tendríamos que sincronizar nuestras palabras y acciones”

Gipsy Venus

 Aunque nuestra organización, Transexuales y Transgeneros en Marcha (TTM), siempre ha incluido la salud de las comunidades Trans en PR como una de sus prioridades, solo habíamos podido desarrollar e implementar iniciativas muy simples y sencillas. A principio del 2010 conocí a Juan Carlos Vega, durante una actividad LGBTT en San Juan, mientras administraba una encuesta en Salud, apoyada por el Network for LGBT Health Equity y la Red Nacional de Latinos Saludables sin Tabaco. Esto represento un nuevo comienzo para TTM. Hoy, nuestras iniciativas en pro de la Salud Trans  están insertadas dentro de un plan estratégico conceptualizado dentro de un modelo lógico de total inclusividad. Nuestra mayor fortaleza radica, no tan solo en la inclusión, sino también en el reconocimiento y es por eso que la Alianza Ciudadana en Pro de la Salud LGBTTA incluye una A en reconocimiento de la inclusión y aportación de los Aliados.  Esta no es la única diferencia que existe entre el movimiento LGBTT de Puerto Rico y el movimiento LGBT de los Estados Unidos. En PR utilizamos la doble TT para reconocer las diferencias entre las personas Trangeneros y Transexuales.  Aunque dichas diferencias sean consideradas simples y sencillas tienen un impacto positivo en nuestro trabajo.  Cuando el  Network for LGBT Health Equity me invita a participar del Creating Change Conference comenzamos a prepararnos recopilando parte de la documentación que sustenta nuestro trabajo, hicimos maletas y sin pensarlo llegamos a Baltimore para darle continuidad al Cambio que desde décadas venimos creando en PR.

Nuestro objetivo primordial es mover a las Organizaciones a nivel de Estados Unidos para que juntos podamos extender el Cambio que la administración Obama representa para las comunidades LGBTT a traves de Estados Unidos. Dejarles saber que las palabras del presidente Obama y Hilary Clinton no son cónsonas con sus acciones, pues todas las políticas de inclusión LGBTT no han sido reforzadas e implementadas en PR.

CONTACT: Chris Viveiros, The Fenway Institute, cviveiros@fenwayhealth.org

Sophia Isabel Marrero Cruz
Transexuales y Transgéneros en Marcha
787.721.0335
sophiamisabel@gmail.com

Yanira Arias
Latino Commission on AIDS
917.575.1124
yarias@latinoaids.org

PRESS RELEASE

Ms. Sophia Marrero Cruz & Dr. Scout at U.S. Department of Justice

Over the weekend of January 28 & 29, more than two dozen federal officials met with representatives from the Puerto Rican group, Transexuales y Transgéneros en Marcha (TTM), and the Network for LGBT Health Equity to discuss the violation of human rights and lack of access to care for transexual women in Puerto Rico. Federal officials were concerned and sometimes shocked by the testimonies of violence and discrimination against the transexual community. For Sophia Isabel Marrero Cruz, a long time Puerto Rican activist and a transexual woman, the unprecedented attention towards Puerto Rico’s issues is the first step in a series of mobilization strategies for the respect of human rights in the island.

“We have been speaking out to the community as well reporting to the government on the murders and systemic beatings of Trans women to the Department of Justice and Police Department of Puerto Rico. To date, none of the murders and beatings have been classified as hate crimes under the local laws, that is a big concern for the safety of the Trans community, a slap in the face to the calls for justice for those victims of crimes, and message of apathy from our local authorities” said Ms. Marrero Cruz who is the spoke person of TTM, a community based organization from Puerto Rico that has been coordinating anti-violence watches since 2003.

Cruz, whose organization is a member of the Citizens Alliance for LGBTTA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, transgender and ally) Health in Puerto Rico and the Network for LGBT Health Equity at The Fenway Institute in Massachusetts, was invited by the Network to D.C. to testify at a U.S. Health And Human Services Office of Civil Rights listening session. She was also able to attend Creating Change, the premier national LGBT civil rights conference. After initial meetings at Creating Change, federal officials worked quickly to assemble additional officials from the Department of Justice and the Health Resources and Services Administration to discuss violence and access to health care problems.

“The response was unprecedented, literally two dozen officials were assembled over the weekend to meet with us on Monday. Just as the challenges in Puerto Rico are a bellwether of LGBT stigma there, this response is a clear bellwether of how the administration wants to support even the most vulnerable among us” said Dr. Scout, Director of the Network for LGBT Health Equity at The Fenway Institute. “I could not have been more pleased with these meetings, I’m sure local changes will follow” added Ms. Cruz.

“We are very interested in smoking and wellness but this is an example of how these are just symptoms of an underlying problem” said Dr. Scout. “There have been eight murders in the last year alone. Puerto Rico is literally the epicenter of LGBT violence in the U.S. and trans women sometimes have to travel to New York to get health care. How can we expect to get traction on LGBT wellness until the issues of violence and basic healthcare are addressed?”

“The transexual community of Puerto Rico is eager to put an end to these issues; they are doing amazing advocacy and mobilization work. While they have few resources such as phone, internet, transportation or even office space, they are committed to putting Puerto Rico’s issues on the map and in front of Federal authorities. We call to all human rights, LGBT organizations, and foundations to provide all needed resources and support to our trans sisters in Puerto Rico” said Yanira Arias, Director of Community Organizing of the Latino Commission on AIDS and long time supporter of TTM and the LGBTTA Alliance.

A note about terminology: In Puerto Rico, the word transexual is used to refer to a person whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth.  Transexual people may or may not decide to alter their bodies hormonally and/or surgically.  Puerto Ricans use the word transgender to refer to people who adopt the dress or manner of the opposite sex but are not interested in transitioning their gender.  The terms used in this press release reflect those usages.

The Network for LGBT Health Equity is a program of The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health.  For more than forty years, Fenway Health has been working to make life healthier for the people in our neighborhood, the LGBT community, people living with HIV/AIDS and the broader population.  The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health is an interdisciplinary center for research, training, education and policy development focusing on national and international health issues. More online at www.fenwayhealth.org.

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The Network is pleased to inform you all of the White House LGBT Conference on Health.

The Event will take place in Philadelphia February 16, 2012. We encourage you to attend if you are able. Scout will be attending on behalf of the Network so if you are planning on attending let us know so we can link you all together. Make sure you RSVP early as space is limited.

White House LGBT Conference on Health

Hosted by the White House and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

in partnership with Mazzoni Center

Thursday, February 16, 2012

8:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Thomas Jefferson University

Dorrance H. Hamilton Building

1001 Locust Street

Philadelphia, PA

Featuring

Kathleen Sebelius

Secretary, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

SPACE IS LIMITED. REGISTER ONLINE: http://go.usa.gov/nxj

Click here for full details on the event.