THE DIVISION OF
EDUCATION & TRAINING
The National LGBT Health Education Center
The National LGBT Health Education Center provides educational programs, resources, and consultation to health care organizations with the goal of optimizing quality, cost-effective health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In FY 2019, faculty from the Education Center presented at conferences, trainings and webinars, educating health care professionals on a range of topics from achieving health equity to care for transgender and non-binary patients to behavioral health.
Online Learning and Education Offerings
Through the National LGBT Health Education Center website, the center currently offers 105 archived online webinars and eight interactive online learning modules on LGBT health topics, which have a combined total view count of more than 110,000. Registered website users currently tally more than 62,000, and hail from all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico.
Publications
The center offers 81 educational publications available for download on the National LGBT Health Education Center website. A select portion of publications are distributed in high-quality printed format to health centers that request them, to health center staff at trainings, conferences, and at meetings. Publications, including clinical briefs, policy issue briefs, consumer posters and brochures, training tools, health care guidelines, and best practices briefs, have been downloaded over 42,246 times.
New publications in FY19:
Conferences
The 4th annual Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health Conference took place September 21–23, 2018. This year’s event was offered as a national course accredited by Harvard Medical School for the second year in a row. The conference trained 430 health care providers in providing competent and confident gender-affirmative health care, grounded in research evidence and best clinical practices. Sessions were led by expert faculty who specialize in transgender-focused research and patient care. This year we were delighted to be able to offer 20 full scholarships for transgender and non-binary providers and students to attend the conference.
On March 22-24, 2019, the National LGBT Health Education Center hosted its inaugural Advancing Excellence for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Conference at the Boston Seaport Hotel. The conference was a great success, with 250 attendees from across the US and beyond coming together to learn how to advance and promote the health and wellness of LGBTQ people. Over the course of three days, attendees heard from dynamic expert presenters in the field of LGBTQ health, with seasoned staff making sure that each session ran smoothly. The goal of the conference was to train attendees in providing competent, confident and affirmative health care, grounded in research evidence and best clinical practices. This conference was built off the success of the Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health conference and was developed to respond to queries from clinicians and health care staff seeking to learn about providing high-quality care for patients who identify as a sexual or gender minority.
Evidence-Informed Interventions Coordinating Center for Technical Assistance
In 2018-2019, the Division of Education and Training continued its four-year initiative funded by HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau titled The Evidence-Informed Interventions Coordinating Center for Technical Assistance (E2i CCTA). This project provides support for 26 Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program-funded recipients for the implementation of evidence-informed interventions. Its aim is to facilitate and guide recipients in their efforts to reduce HIV-related health disparities and improve health outcomes, including increasing retention in care, improving treatment adherence, and improving viral suppression for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Milestones in the Second Year (August 2018-July 2019) of the project included:
LGBT Aging Project
The LGBT Aging Project ‘s mission is to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender older adults have equal access to the life prolonging benefits, protections, services, and institutions needed to age with dignity and respect. The LGBT Aging Project provides LGBT cultural competency training and technical assistance for elder service providers, community building for LGBT older adults and caregivers themselves, and civic engagement regarding local and national policy and research.
In FY 2019 the LGBT Aging Project staff conducted 63 trainings, workshops and webinars for a total of 2,306 participants including five local and national conferences and 12 media interviews/articles that reached nearly 1 million people. The Aging Project also participated in 15 community events reaching nearly 1000 LGBT older adults and caregivers. LGBT Aging Project staff focused much of the year on developing an online learning module as implementation of the Commonwealth’s first in the nation legislation requiring all those who work with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs to complete LGBT aging cultural competency training. LGBT Aging Project also continued their leadership on the Massachusetts LGBT Aging Commission.
Partnerships
The Division of Education and Training partnered with many organizations to provide trainings on LGBTQIA+ health. Some of these partners include:
New England AIDS Education Training Center (NEAETC)
The Institute worked with NEAETC to educate providers on PrEP through webinars, live trainings and the dissemination of its PrEP tool kits.
New York City Health & Hospitals
A continued partnership with NYC Health & Hospitals saw training of health care providers across the city. Employees in all five boroughs received training on LGBT competency. Additionally, FY18 saw the launch of a new training program around building a transgender youth clinic. The Institute partnered with BCH’s GeMS team to facilitate trainings. It also launched a series of trainings specifically focused on collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data, with trainings for staff hosted across the city.
