Network April Update

The Network had a lot happening in April!

– The launching of our wellness model program is just around the corner! The program (we’re still deciding on a name- we’ll call it HealthLink for now) is designed to support LGBT community centers in health and wellness ventures. We will offer resources, template programming, and technical assistance. Our first resource offering will be the LGBT Wellness Needs Assessment. In April we worked with our amazing evaluators at The Fenway Institute to compile the full Needs Assessment toolkit- including an introduction to the importance and uses of data collection, guidance on how to administer the assessment, background on the creation of the Assessment, and an example of the report card that they will receive showing their collected data. We will be launching the Needs Assessment with a webinar on May 14th for LGBT community centers!

In April we also worked closely with the Michigan Department of Health to facilitate their offering small grants to LGBT Community Centers to utilize the Needs Assessment. And, four centers will be launching the Needs Assessment this summer!

And in April, The LGBT Cancer Network decided that they will be rolling out Take Care of That Body, their national LGBT cancer screening campaign, in June as part of HealthLink’s launch.

– MAP LGBT center survey: The bi-annual MAP LGBT Community Center Survey was completed by the centers at the beginning of April. Together with our TFI evaluators, we began looking at the collected data in order to create a comprehensive overview of existing health and wellness programming, as well as needs and gaps.

– We spent this month planning our annual in-person Steering committee meeting which will be held in Las Vegas in September. We will be holding it in the two days preceding the annual CenterLink Summit. Additionally, four of our steering committee members will be rotating off this summer, so April was spent disseminating information about our steering committee and seeking new applicants. We had twenty-six applications, and voting will be held in mid-May.

– Network staff will be heading to the CenterLink offices in mid-May for a team meeting

– Scout wrote and submitted the first draft of an LGBT cancer chapter for an upcoming LGBT health textbook

– Every year we submit a re-application to CDC to discuss plans for next year, and an update on the current year. We wrote and submitted our reapplication last month for 2014-2015. We have lots of exciting things in store for next year!

– The Weekly LGBT Health Roundup on the Huffington Post LGBT Wellness page got some serious traction in April! Check out our April roundups HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE!

– We have been working closely with Tips From Former Smokers media team to create a comprehensive list of LGBT media outlets for the next phase of the campaign.