Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital and Howard Brown Health Center, on Oct. 2, hosted the first Midwest LGBTQ Health Symposium, which tackled myriad health issues and disparities in services that have affected the LGBT community.
Numerous factors, many of them indirect, have an impact on the overall physical and mental health of the LGBT community, said Dr. Scout, a Lincoln, Rhode Island-based writer and activist, who is director of the advocacy network LGBT HealthLink. In the morning keynote, he elaborated on how those factors have led to significant community challenges.
Politics is one such factor, he said: "When states pass negative laws, the number of mental health problems go up … even in neighboring states."
A celebrity-driven event that might to many people seem innocuous, such as Caitlyn Jenner's coming-out, can be meaningful for others. Increased visibility of a topic can be liberating for some, and difficult for others who are in an oppressive environment. Scout noted that a member of his family came out as transgender shortly after Jenner's television interview early this year.
He added that, for many, life does not automatically get easier when they come out the closet, and LGBT face personal and financial difficulties that can lead to struggles with addiction or depression. Scout, who has worked on a number of anti-smoking initiatives, called smoking the biggest challenge facing the LGBT community, noting that more money is spent on cigarettes each year than all LGBT health issues combined.
"I've talked to plenty of people who started smoking at gay youth meetings, and that's just sad," he said.
The engagement between the community and its health-providers is strained by difficulties many LGBTs have in speaking with their doctors. A survey taken of Michigan residents said 64 percent would not be comfortable coming out to medical personnel; this is further complicated by financial problems that many in the community struggle against. Despite increased insurance availability through the Affordable Care Act, LGBTs still represent a disproportionate number of uninsured Americans.
Scout also encouraged audience members to consider the low rate of HPV screening among gay men, as well as the mental health needs of bisexuals, who quite often face stigma from both the gay community as well as the straight one. He also spoke out against stigmatizing individuals who are taking the drug Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
"We finally have what we have dreamed about," Scout noted. "As someone who cut my teeth on ACT UP and Queer Nation, we would have fallen all over ourselves to have [PrEP]."
He further asked the audience, most of them medical providers, to consider how welcoming their offices might seem to LGBT patients—did they have inclusive promotional materials, or use any rainbow iconography in public spaces, for example?
"What is the path people follow to walk into your door?" Scout asked. "How do you show that you are not part of that history [of bias]?"
Scout was introduced by Susan Nordstrom, president of Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center; David Munar, president and CEO of Howard Brown Health Center ( HBHC ); and Cecilia Hardacker, director of geriatric education at HBHC.
