In February, LET’S was a co applicant on a grant to continue the work of the Beyond the Binary committee. In May, we heard that our application had been successful. Yay!
From the application: The overall goal of this Planning and Dissemination project is to inform nationally acceptable and feasible guidance and resources to advance patient-oriented, trauma-informed women’s health research. Stakeholder engagement with 1) community (experts and persons with lived experience) and 2) researchers (including trainees and research administrators) will identify good practices for the implementation of such research guidance and resources through a foundational resource package developed in British Columbia (BC). This will then be the focus of a future implementation science grant. The project also includes a national virtual seminar to share the guidance, resource package and good practices with the widest possible audience of researchers, trainees. and community members.
LET’S contribution with the grant included explaining why this work was important to our organization and members. LET’S Executive Director wrote:
“As leader of an organization by disabled people for disabled people, I come to this project with a patient-oriented and trauma-informed perspectives. The majority of our members have, what we call, medical PTSD. This is trauma based on negative and harmful interactions with medical professionals and a medical system that is deeply “ist” (ableist, classist, racist, etc.). We have members who avoid medical appointments because they don’t want to be constantly misgendered by medical professionals who haven’t been taught the appropriate language. We have others who hide their identities because they feel, based on experience (theirs and others), that they will receive less adequate treatment as for example, trans people. This project is an opportunity to move forward in a gender-equitable, patient-oriented, and trauma-informed manner. I want to see the day when our members can access a medical system that affirms and respects their identities. I work towards the day when they don’t have to avoid medical assistance because of their intersecting identities.
I believe this project is an important step forward to opening this conversation up and creating tools for medical professionals to better learn about our experiences. This work is also vital for all the people within the medical professional who are of these identities. We want the medical system, the very place they work, to be equitable to them as well as us, the patients. We want their co-workers to know the appropriate language to affirm and respect them. We want all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to be seen and validated.”