Trans and Gender Diverse Community Track
Knowledge and Skills Building Workshops
A significant obstacle preventing consistent linkage to health care reported by LGBTQ+ and gender diverse individuals is discrimination and disrespect from providers. This also occurs widely in institutions outside the healthcare realm such as housing and employment. The need to enhance patient-provider and client-provider interactions has been highlighted repeatedly by many research studies. One of these published studies, highlighted in this workshop, indicates how important it is to provide providers with training on the delivery of culturally humble service to LGBTQ+ and gender diverse populations. Research shows this need applies to institutions outside healthcare as well.
With this in mind, the Equitas Health Institute provides training and consultation services (such as structural competency assessments) to organizations throughout our region on best practices for inclusively serving the LGBTQ+ and gender diverse populations. All training conducted by the Institute is evaluated at pre and post and analysis of data provides evidence of effective learning outcomes.
Structural competency assessments provide analysis from the point of view of LGBTQ+ clients in terms of physical space, organizational policies, and any client/patient paperwork, electronic medical records, etc. The assessment report also includes recommendations to increase inclusive and affirming care and services. Training is typically provided in conjunction with structural competency assessments. Evidence also suggests that issues faced by this population related to these institutions lead to health disparities, and that when those issues are prevented and/or eliminated, the health disparities are reduced.
This workshop will examine the methods used in our training and assessments, share excerpts of the workshops themselves, as well as provide an opportunity for an interactive dialogue about best practices to keep trans and gender diverse patients linked to health care and other social service providers, thus decreasing health disparities in this community.