ACTION ALERT: One Month to Demand Partnership in Local Community Transformation Grants

by Scout, Ph.D.

Local CTG Grantees Have One Month To Modify Action Plans

Remember how (just minutes ago) we posted that leaders are urging local disparity leaders to demand partnership in the newly awarded $100M of Community Transformation Grants (CTGs)?

Well good news is, many of the new grantees are right now modifying their action plans! CDC has asked for the new plans to be submitted to them by end of January. This means right now is a perfect time to contact the people who got the award locally and urge this partnership. Clock is ticking!

Who to Contact and How

The entities below are the CTG grantees who have to submit modified action plans by end of January. We have contact information for each of them, or you can just google it and call the top person. Please email us at lgbthealthequity@gmail.com if you want the direct contact information.

What to Ask

• CDC urges you to address health disparities with this award. Do you have LGBT communities identified as a disparity population this CTG award will target in your Action Plan?
• CDC requires that you have a “Leadership Team” that includes reps from disparity popuations. Do you have LGBT people on your Leadership Team for the grant?
• CDC requires you to do extensive data collection for evaluation. Are you collecting LGBT status as part of your demographics?
• CDC requires 50% of these funds to be regranted locally. Are you planning on funding disparity community based organizations with these regranted monies? (versus just health departments)
• Are you integrating a full range of disparity populations in the Action Plan, Leadership Team, and regranting plans?
• If no to any of the above – Why not? We can help you fix this, provide data, people, groups, etc. What will it take to make this change?

Talking Points

• LGBT people smoke at rates from 35% to almost 200% more than the local population
• If we haven’t collected local data on this disparity – why do you think the national LGBT disparity data don’t apply to us?
• Remember, even for the exercise/nutrition components of this award, if we change the main population, but don’t integrate disparity populations into that work, this could build a new disparity.
• LGBT people, and all of the overlapping disparity populations have the ground forces, and policy change organizing skills you need to change local health policies. AKA If you’re trying to change local policy without us, it’s like leaving some of your best racehorses in the stable.

Successful Strategies

• If LGBT people and/or other disparity groups are not being included — shine a spotlight on this fact, get press, post a blog about it, share with your membership. If a policy gap is widely known, it’s more likely to be fixed.
• Identify what allies you might have above the grantees, like the Commissioner of the local health department, or allies in the Governors office, etc. Telling them about this gap can also help fix it.
• Reach out to and partner with allied disparity population leadership to approach the grantee together, remember that parable about one stick and a bundle of sticks!
• Remember you’re trying to partner with the local grantee, ask the hard questions, ask them loudly if need be, but offer solutions, you want to be the people who can fix a problem for them. You’re trying to build a working relationship here.

When?

ASAP, the groups above to turn in their new plans by end of January! It’ll be much harder to get inclusion once those plans are turned in.