by Shayna Plaut
Given two minutes to create a wish list regarding her new position, Stacey Long, the Woman's Program Director at Howard Brown Health Center, stated, "I wish I didn't have to be here. I wish we were taking care of women as second nature and we didn't need a special program."
Long, originally from New York City and former woman's health officer for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services, is keenly aware of the need to include women as an essential part of health, LGBT policy and the policies surrounding LGBT populations. Quoting the mission of HBHC, Long stated, "We need to implement programs that truly allow us to live our mission."
When asked to clarify, she stated a situation where young women were asking for the birth control Depo— Provera. HBHC did not provide the drugit is issues like this that have allowed Long to see the opportunities in her position.
Long said one of her main goals as "image shaping." Currently there is a schism in the public's perception of HBHC either as, "really poor" or "white gay affluent men. We need to dispel this misinformation," Long said.
Although HBHC saw nearly 4,500 patients in the 1999 fiscal year, 21% were women and 61% were white: "This signals a strong need to do something." Future plans include purchasing billboard space on the CTA and advertising heavily in the Black and Latino communities through connections such as Amigas Latinas and Harambee. HBHC is also currently looking into various avenues of informing the public of its sliding— fee scale, its move towards effective Medicare acceptance and its increasing reputation as one of the finest medical providers in the nation.
Through creating "unlikely bedfellows" internally and externally, Long is determined to put the issues of women and LGBT heath into common discourse. "We need to gather our sense of reality and then push for going forward. I'm going to try and be savvyhow can I do this in stages? What kind of unlikely alliances can be forged and how can I marry these to the alliances I have already from my work in Wisconsin?" When asked to define what this plan of action can be, particularly here in the Midwest, Long explained: "The pace is slower, that means we can look to the East and West Coast as models. We have the advantage of learning from their mistakes and then decide we don't want to go there."
As an employee of Horizons in the early 䚪s, Long explained her familiarity with the LGBT community in Chicago and her knowledge of how things "happen or don't happen here." Among issues Long recognizes need to be discussed is the possible inclusion of "transgendered" into the HBHC mission and the need for more active communication, within the lesbian community, regarding lesbians who sleep with men.
Some ideas include utilizing the women's advisory board, which currently meets the second Wednesday of every month, as a sounding board for issues and liaison forming in order to, "make sure that the women's program is as competent, appropriate, thorough and lesbian sensitive as it can be."
In order to bring issues and ideas into light, a Women's Program Open House is planned for March 25, with an open invitation to the community. Currently HBHC and the Chicago Center for Family Health are creating a post— graduate certification program addressing the psychological needs of the LGBT community, which Long has a strong interest in. Long is also involved in the Lesbian Breast Cancer Quality of Life research grant that is being supervised by Alicia Matthews at the University of Chicago in conjunction with HBHC.
Long is also concentrating on expanding the volunteer pool to make it more representative of the population it serves. In order to have a more informed public, maintenance of the resource center, with the ultimate goal of turning it into a lending library, is a top priority.
In terms of vision, Long was very clear: "Most importantly, we need to listen to what is being said. Our issues should be similar, you can be a dyke, a big bull dyke, a leather dyke, a femme and we'll deal with the medical issue: you're a lesbian and we want to make sure you stay a healthy lesbian."