Improving Health Equity for LGBTQ Youth in Canada and Globally
Addressing the Role of Families and Culture
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two Spirit (LGBTQ2S) adolescents face significant health disparities compared to their heterosexual and cis-gender peers in every country where research has tracked their health.
There are some positive signs, but it’s less clear whether advances are equally relevant for youth from diverse ethnic youth, or whether there are disparities within LGBTQ youth populations, where particular efforts are not as effective at that intersection of sexual orientation, gender identity, and culture.
“We are learning about what works in schools for LGBTQ youth generally, but what we don’t know is whether or not these same kinds of programs and policies like gay-straight alliances actually work for multi-ethnic youth,” explains UBC Nursing Professor Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc.
Research also shows that families are important sources of support for youth, but recent trends show parental support for LGBTQ2S youth is not improving.
“What we don’t know is how do we help families help LGBTQ youth? What are the actions that parents do that youth identify as being supportive or rejecting? What does a supportive family look like, what does it look like when it’s not supportive? ? What are the best ways that we can help them be supportive or understanding? From there we need to understand and develop interventions to help parents and families help their LGBTQ and Two Spirit teens,” says Dr. Saewyc.
The Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC), founded by Dr Saewyc in 2006, has received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Foundation Grant to study these questions. SARAVYC is one of only nine recipients in BC (of 76 nationally) to be funded and received $2,994,951 to continue their valuable work. For the next seven years, the grant will support research to create culturally-relevant knowledge and interventions that help families and parents support the health of LGBTQ2S youth.
In the first few years, the team will focus on identifying current trends and recruiting advisory groups from ethnically diverse populations to help formulate what will be important for helping LGBTQ2S youth from these backgrounds. These early consultations will help build an advisory group that can continue to provide input on designing culturally-respectful interventions to support parents and families of LGBTQ2S youth. Online consultations will also be developed to ensure that the team is able to gather a wide range of perspectives from parents and youth across Canada.
“We know from a variety of studies that family support – caring and nurturing families – is important for all young people’s health and well being, but for trans youth, lesbian, gay, and bisexual teens… when they have strong family support they do better. They have lower odds of suicide and mental health problems. Even if they get bullied at school they do better.”
Dr Elizabeth Saewyc
SARAVYC’s 7-Year Program of Research Has 4 Primary Aims:
With a focus on rural and ethno-culturally diverse LGBTQ2S youth, this CIHR funded research program will:
- Identify trends in health and health disparities (including intersectional stigma) for these youth,
- Examine family and school influences on LGBTQ2S youth health issues; and
- Develop and test novel, culturally relevant family interventions to help build parental support and reduce family rejection of their LGBTQ2S youth,
- Develop and test technology-based health promotion interventions for youth
Several excellent supports are already in place for parents of LGBTQ2S youth, such as PFLAGcanada.ca and TransParentCanada.ca. But the benefits of group support are not available to everyone. “One of the challenges in accessing parental supports is that you have to be in urban areas,“ Dr Saewyc points out. In rural areas, fewer families have similar challenges, so building a group presents its own difficulty; additional hardships develop when committing to group meetings that may take place in the evening over several weeks; and attending such groups can “out” a family before they are prepared to meet further complications. “So,” Dr Saewyc continues, “we are actually going to be exploring other ways of reaching parents.” Current technologies that will be explored include interventions designed around the online environment, around smartphones, and text messaging. “We’ve had some success in doing that work with LGBTQ youth themselves, so building on that, we’re looking at exploring interventions for parents or families that would involve technology and not necessarily require face-to-face group participation to get the support they need to support the kids.”
In the later years of the grant, the team will leverage their findings to design tailored interventions delivered online or using smart phone and text message tools that can be scaled and adapted for different populations. During this time, the second phase of the Trans Youth Health Survey will also be launched to track any changes from the inaugural survey conducted five years previously.
As always, Dr Saewyc and the team will be collaborating with an international network of scholars that includes health professionals, policymakers, educators, service providers, and youth and their families to produce evidence-based research that influences policy, practice, and health. Together they will also conduct population data comparisons across different countries, work to find ways to better understand and promote resilience among sexually exploited youth globally, and continue to focus on research that has meaningful influence on Canadian policy.
Merrilee Hughes and Elizabeth Saewyc
Community Engagement
We welcome volunteers. Members of communities who have a passion for supporting this work are welcome to contact us and we’ll be happy to talk with them and tap expertise in that respect. Please reach out to Dr Jennifer Wolowic, our managing director, to express interest. We will be creating community advisories and involving community groups in some of this work to help provide some clear guidance along the way.
We are grateful to have this sustained funding over seven years, but it is a relatively modest amount to support a lot of work, especially in engaging people across the province and Canada. That community work takes time, and it usually takes a little extra funding to pay for the details that bring a group together – everything from promotion to snacks. There’s definitely room for interested community members to consider contributing financially to the Centre, and because we are a Centre at UBC, we are in a position to accept donations officially to support the work.
So we are more than happy to talk with interested community members about the potential of contributing to this work in a variety of ways.