May was the official launch month for our Wellness Needs Assessment; it was kicked off with a webinar about the Needs Assessment for Community Centers (“HealthLink Resource: Local Health Data Project”). We are excited to announce that since then, community centers in Arkansas and Michigan have gone live with the LGBTQ Needs Assessment- check out the press release HERE! We are also working closely with additional centers in Vermont, Missouri and Southern California to plan their launches next.
We traveled a lot in May. Scout went to DC to speak at the conference for one of our sister networks, the National Council for Behavioral Health; the panel was introducing all the CDC disparity networks to their membership. We are planning a follow-up webinar in the next month. Then all Health Equity and Cancer Network staff heading down to the CenterLink offices for a two day meeting, one of our rare times to see each other face to face. The meeting was extremely productive; much of our discussion was around brand expansion and social media strategies. Directly from Florida, Scout flew to Missouri where they worked with the staff at PROMO and SAGE on their LGBT Health Policy Change Project. They’re petitioning local hospitals to change policies to be more welcoming to LGBT people and are having some great successes. See the first of their new write-ups on our blog here and here and watch for more of that success story to unfold there.
We are pleased to announce that a writer we mentored has auditioned for and been accepted as a new blogger for Huffington Post. Corey Prachniak, a member of our Steering Committee and frequent blogger for us, is an attorney at Whitman-Walker, and is at the forefront of the LGBT health Equity movement and will be an amazing spokesperson and asset for the Network’s online presence- click HERE to see Corey’s powerful first HuffPo post, “I don’t want to die alone”. We look forward to him helping us create strong content for the Huffington Post LGBT Wellness page. This month we also debuted our first Huffington Post Wellness blog featuring a community center; read about how Robert Boo from The Pride Center in Ft. Lauderdale went on an amazing wellness journey here and please contact us if you have a wellness story you want featured.
Also this month, the Network met with the OSH media folks about the LGBT dissemination plan for the next national tobacco control media campaign (“Tips”) launch in July. The Network continued to write the “Weekly LGBT Wellness Roundup” for the Huffington Post LGBT Wellness page, and covered many topics this month, including the increased risk of cancer for people with HIV, anti-tobacco messaging in LGBT media and the financial impact of breast cancer on minority survivors. Check out: WEEK 1, WEEK 2, WEEK 3 and WEEK 4.
Additional May blogs:
New Study Looks at Smoking Cessation Among People with HIV By Corey Prachniak
I Did It: A Mile Per Day By Liz Margolies
LGBT Youth Health: Some Current Research That Can Help with Advocacy By Michael Bare
Diplomacy and Global LGBT Health By Michael Bare
Promoting Our Health and Embracing our Ill By Liz Margolies
May’s social media numbers:
The National LGBT Cancer Network’s work fell primarily under three broad categories for the month of May: Writing, Summit Action Plan, and CenterLink Health Programs. Writing included an Essentials column for the Journal of Oncology Nursing (written; publication pending), Expert Voices blog for the American Cancer Society titled “The Same, Only Scarier,” a Letter to the Editor titled “The Omission of Sexual and Gender Minorities,” in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, blogs on both the Network for LGBT Health Equity and Huffington Post LGBT Wellness, and our weekly LGBT Health Roundup. We organized writers for the National LGBT Cancer Action Plan from the 2014 Summit on Cancer in the LGBT Communities; all author submissions should be received by the end of June. We submitted an abstract, and were accepted for presentation at the APHA conference. We prepared for a webinar presentation of “Take Care of That Body,” as part of our CenterLink Health Programs, to LGBT Community Center attendees. Additionally, Michael was asked and accepted to be on the CA Department of Public Health LGBT Cancer Health Task Force.
Both Michael and Liz attended the Network for LGBT Health Equity meeting in Fort Lauderdale, where we worked on improving social media dissemination strategy among other processes. In terms of social media, in May we crested the 10,000 Twitter follower mark, our Facebook followers also gradually increased in line with prior monthly increases and our posts were continually clicked, shared and liked with 2 of our postings, sharing the CDC’s “The Burning Truth” campaign, and marketing for our online support groups, garnering the most clicks and reshares.
LGBT HealthLink, The Network for Health Equity 
