Nebraska Travelogue: Everyone Meet the National LGBT Expert Day

I was up early and out late yesterday because Athena had a huge day planned for me in Nebraska, 7 meetings, 2 of them presentations. Athena is a lead on the Metro Omaha Tobacco Action Coalition, or MOTAC. MOTAC worked with local groups to sponsor this extra day in town for me, allowing them to set up a bunch of meetings with local folk working to do more in LGBT health/tobacco.

Tuesday Agenda

• 9:30 – Meet with Midlands Sexual Health Research Collaborative
• Noon – Lunch ‘N Learn Presentation at U of Nebraska College of Public Health “LGBT Tobacco Control: Lessons from a Disparity Population”
• 1 pm – informal meeting with local tobacco coalition members
• 2 pm – meeting with Dr. Su, Director of UNMC Center for Reducing Health Disparities
• 4 pm – meeting with “A la familia” trainers
• 6-8 pm – Dinner presentation with Heartland Pride on smokefree pride events

A lot of great stuff happened at these meetings, some of them are chewy enough to have their own posts, so I’ll do that. Sometimes resources we found out about in one meetings were able to be connected with ideas from the next meeting. At the Lunch N Learn presentation for the school of public health I focused on how tobacco education and linkages were used in creative ways to help advance a bunch of larger LGBT health issues at the national level – and why now I really believe the next forum for LGBT health gains is doing the same at state level. I had a great conversation with the head of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities that I hope might result in new LGBT research proposals. We had several good conversations about strategies for outreach to the LGBT Latin@ communities, because that’s a growing population here.

At the meet with the local tobacco control coalition I really respect the woman who brought up her discomfort with the plans for using drag performers to hand out awards at a coming tobacco control luncheon. That’s the kind of real honesty that helps us all grow. In this case, it was a chance for me to tell her about Rescue Social Change, the national group who’s doing so well using entertainers like this for health educational purposes, and how they even received a large award to expand their tobacco control media work.

Did you already see the Rescue Social Change Video about the recent event they did for us at the National Tobacco Conference? This is the event that gave the Nebraska folk the idea to hold their own Tobacco-Free Drag Diva contest here, it’s a must watch.