Puerto Rico is our dream!

by Scout

Program Director

Reporting on 1st LGBTT Health Summit in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico Tobacco Prevention Summit

First we watch the local organizers knock it out of the park with their first ever LGBTT health summit yesterday, but today it only got better. (FYI: two Ts because locally you say transsexual and transgender)
We wake up to hear the LGBTT Summit has gotten a big story in the main San Juan paper (see pic including quote by one of our favorite bloggers, Juan Carlos Vega). Then I bike over to the main Puerto Rico Tobacco Prevention Summit, where the happy news just keeps washing over all of us.

PR Tobacco Prevention Summit Flyer

First, even though the conference is sold out, since I’m from the Network for LGBT Health Equity, I’m welcomed as a VIP; then we see the cover of the program includes a rainbow; then we see every major sponsor of the LGBTT summit has been recognized as a sponsor of this event (including ourselves and the Latino disparity network) (see other picture); then we hear that the PR quitline last year started asking if callers were LGBTT; then we count and realize 6 of 8 conference breakout sessions include content by the LGBTT organizers; and then we learn that one month ago PR even added LGBT questions to their Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (the main “state” health survey)! Can you believe it? I only wish half the states were as inclusive of LGBT and all disparities as is the fine US Territory of Puerto Rico.

AND they have amazing beaches! Let the emigration begin.