National LGBT Health Conference 2024

Project summary/abstract The 2024 National LGBTQ Health Conference will bring together leading researchers and practitioners, trainees, and students to bridge research and practice to address health disparities for LGBTQ populations. This proposal requests funding to support professional development and attendance and travel scholarships

for underrepresented groups at the 9th National LGBTQ Health Conference, a 3-day conference being held in Atlanta at Emory University. Emory hosted this conference in 2019 with the conference founders, Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGHM) and Center on Halsted (COH). The

2024 conference will continue to build on previous successful conferences, and the leadership are experienced conference leaders from Emory University and Northwestern University. When the conference was hosted in Atlanta in 2019, the goal was to expand its scope of attendees due to a regional change in location, new

thought leaders, and the formation of the National Scientific Review and Program Committee. All these initiatives were highly successful, and the conference was the largest to date and included the most geographic, age and professional diversity. The overall goal of this conference is to catalyze research to reduce

and eliminate health disparities among LGBTQ people by improving both research and practice on LGBTQ health by convening an interprofessional audience to present and discuss innovative translational findings in the field; to provide intentional professional development and networking opportunities for the next

generation of practitioners and researchers in LGBTQ health; and to recruit and support attendance of students, post-docs, and junior faculty with a focus on inclusion of underrepresented groups. Health disparities among LGBTQ people are severe and affect life expectancy, mental and physical health, access to

and quality of care, and overall quality of life even for youth. Critical disparities are found in risk and incidence of mental health issues including suicide, substance abuse, HIV and other STIs and are linked to minority status, stigma, discrimination, and denial of human and civil rights. As is the case among other minorities

experiencing disparities, these disparities are not borne equally among all LGBTQ people: transgender people, LGBTQ people of color, youth, and low-income people bear a disproportionate burden of these disparities. The proposed 2024 National LGBTQ Health Conference is an important opportunity to gather the best knowledge

and practice in the field through an intersectional lens to improve the lives of all LGBTQ people.