Vowing not to lose the momentum built since the 1998 Healthy Lives conference, about 40 women's healthcare providers, researchers and the curious attended the first meeting of the Chicago Midwest Lesbian Health Research Consortium Feb. 21.
"Regardless of what the political climate is, we have a window of opportunity," said Lora Branch, director of the Chicago Department of Public Health's Office of Gay and Lesbian Health.
Organizers said the meeting was an important step in creating a plan to increase the research and services re-lated to lesbian and bisexual women's health, both in Chicago and the Midwest.
The event brought together women and three menfrom across the country, including Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Richmond, Va., and San Francisco.
It also united participants from across disciplines, organizations and interests, with people from Howard Brown Health Center, Amigas Latinas, the Illinois Department of Public Health, Horizons, the Chicago Department of Public Health, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, three of the city's universities, and the federal Health and Human Services Department.
Organizers included Andrea Densham of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, Michelle Hoersch of HHS's Office of Women's Health, and Tonda Hughes of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where the meeting was held.
"This is quite a varied group with a lot of commitment," said Teresa Scollon, the event's facilitator.
National researcher Judy Bradford, of Virginia Commonwealth University, gave a historical overview of lesbian health, noting the shift from research that considered lesbianism a disorder to studies that look at living as a lesbian as a healthy lifestyle.
After a promising start in the 1970s, Bradford said, lesbian health research was pre-empted in the 1980s by the emergence of HIV and AIDS.
In the mid-'90s, work began to pick up again, and several initiatives and organizations have since been launched nationwide, including the Lesbian Health Research Initiative, the Institute of Medicine Committee on Lesbian Health Research Priorities, the National Coalition for LGBT Health and the Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer.
Bradford also noted the importance of the push to bring researchers and community-based providers together for collaborations.
Suzanne Dibble of the University of California-San Francisco's Center for Lesbian Health gave a forecast of the current state of research, discussing how much more sophisticated studies have become. For instance, researchers have discovered that there are distinct differences in the health behaviors of women who identify as butch, those who identify as femme and those who ID as simply lesbian.
"We're trying to advance the science around lesbian health," Dibble said.
UCSF's Center is hosting a national lesbian health conference June 22-23, 2001, in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the UCSF's Center for Gender Equity.
The conference, entitled Challenges of the New Millennium, will investigate topics such as: cancer and tobacco use, substance abuse, mental health, wellness and nutrition, disability, impairment, immune disorders, family issues and access to care.
Co-sponsors include Howard Brown, Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, Whitman Walker Clinic in D.C., the Mautner Project and the National Institutes of Health. Visit www.glma.org for more information.
For more information on the Consortium, call ( 312 ) 413-1924.