Final week of the summer institute

by Nicole VanKim

Guest Blogger, Reporting from the Summer Institute 2011

For the final week of the institute, we had another great line up of guest speakers. We started the week off with Phoenix Matthews, an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who indulged us with a great discussion on tobacco interventions for LGBT populations. On Tuesday, Kerith Conron from Northeastern University introduced us to cognitive testing of questions used to collected transgender data in population-based surveillance systems. She was followed by Walter Bockting, a professor at the University of Minnesota, who led a discussion on the development of transgender health research. Ilan Meyer, a Williams Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute at UCLA, held a double session on the Proposition 8 trial and the role of the minority stress theory on Wednesday. Wrapping up the seminar series for the Summer Institute was Conall O’Cleirigh from Harvard University, leading a discussion on the impact of childhood sexual abuse on the health of gay and bisexual men.

On Friday, aka the final day of the Institute, we will be presenting our projects. We are all scurrying to pull together our presentations in the final few days left and enjoying each others company’s before we part ways soon.