Events
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The San Francisco Principles 2020: Centering Long-Term HIV Survivors in Research, Care, and Advocacy
The San Francisco Principles 2020 builds on the 1983 Denver Principles to highlight the critical needs of long-term HIV/AIDS survivors (LTS) as they age with HIV. This important statement brings attention to the linked problems of aging, unfair health access, and how systems often ignore marginalized people within the LTS community.
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Beyond the Clinic: How Holy Cross Health is Transforming LGBTQ+ Health Through Outreach and Advocacy
Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is advancing health equity through a comprehensive, community-based approach to HIV prevention and care, STI and Hepatitis C screening, and LGBTQ+ health. Broward County remains one of the nation’s HIV epicenters, with 579 new diagnoses in 2022, far exceeding the national average. Despite this, 96.2 percent of people living with HIV in the county know their status, and 80.8 percent are linked to care within one month. Holy Cross Health’s initiatives, such as community outreach, HIV self-testing, and culturally competent education, are designed to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ individuals who are disproportionately affected by these conditions. The program is led by community advocates and LGBTQ+ healthcare professionals who step beyond traditional clinical roles to engage directly with the community. This session will explore the program’s design, implementation, and measurable impact, offering a replicable model for other health systems.
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Bridging the Gap: Social Innovation and Community-Centered Interventions to Improve LGBTQ+ Healthcare Access
This session centers on using research, community engagement, and social innovation to address these systemic inequities. Drawing from the qualitative study Exploring Interventions to Improve Healthcare Access for LGBTQ+ Individuals, it highlights trauma-informed strategies from organizations like the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Their peer-led, culturally responsive models and harm reduction frameworks offer promising approaches for transforming service delivery and improving outcomes.
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Chem Sex: New Horizons
In this conversation, we expand the frame to ask: What do we mean when we say chemsex? Who gets included, and who doesn’t? What does that reveal about or conceptualiztion of chem sex and the risk involved? We’ll explore how people of all genders and sexualities engage in sex and substance use, and how experiences of disability, chronic illness, trauma, and marginalization shape those choices. We’ll look beyond the typical substances to include alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, mushrooms, and other drugs that are often excluded from chem sex conversations. We’ll ask: What is a substance? What is sex? And how do race, gender, class, and ableism shape our assumptions about “risk,” “pleasure,” and “safety”?
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OUTSafe: LGBTQ+ Older Adult Violence Prevention Program
This SYNC session will lead attendees through the OUTSafe curriculum and resources, offering providers in the field an essential tool to address older adult victimization and a guide for creating safe spaces and safer institutions for older LGBTQ+ adults.
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Affirming, Inclusive Reproductive Healthcare for LGBTQ+ Populations
This session includes an overview of LGBTQ+ reproductive health disparities, systemic barriers faced by LGBTQ+ clients navigating reproductive health services, and actionable steps organizations and providers can take to provide affirming, inclusive care.
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LGBTQIA+ Health and Community Engagement in a Politically Charged Climate
This presentation explores strategies for effective LGBTQIA+ health promotion and community engagement amid a shifting sociopolitical landscape. Drawing on recent case studies, grassroots initiatives, and community-led research, we examine the ways in which LGBTQIA+ individuals and organizations are responding to policy rollbacks and social hostility. We highlight inclusive health interventions, mutual aid networks, and coalition-building as mechanisms for advocacy and care.
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Bridging Mental Health Equity and HIV Prevention for LGBTQ+ College Students: A Systematic Review and Public Health Framework for Appalachia
LGBTQ+ students in U.S. colleges experience disproportionately high rates of mental health disorders and HIV vulnerability—risks exacerbated in rural and Appalachian regions by structural stigma, provider shortages, and limited-service access. Despite this convergence, few interventions integrate mental health and HIV prevention in campus settings.
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Deconstructing Intersectional Trauma: Empowering Black LGBTQIA+ Men in Therapy and Behavioral Health Services
This presentation offers a clinical and social work-centered approach to addressing the mental health needs of Black LGBTQIA+ men through trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and identity-affirming strategies. This session will explore how toxic stress stemming from early-life adversity impacts emotional regulation, relationship-building, and self-worth. Special emphasis will be placed on how systemic oppression, societal stigma, and the lack of culturally competent mental health services heighten these challenges.
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Empowering Health Professionals to Advocate for Gender-Affirming Care: A Multi-Level Approach
This session will train health professionals to become effective advocates for gender-affirming care at the institutional, state, and federal levels. Amid growing legislative, administrative, and regulatory challenges to transgender health care, health professionals have a unique role and responsibility to advocate for inclusive, evidence-based policies. This session will provide participants with actionable tools to address barriers to care, counter misinformation, and build coalitions to support gender-affirming care access.
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From Neglect to Respect: Ending the HIV Endemic with Affirmation
This session explores how affirmation-based intervention models — grounded in cultural pride, self-preservation, and community affirmation — are essential to ending the HIV endemic. Using a community engagement and harm reduction framework, we discuss the historical roots of disconnection, and how strategic investments in culturally affirming outreach and education are critical. We offer models and approaches that center community affirmation, mental health support, and intergenerational healing as HIV prevention tools.
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Project GROWTH: A Culturally Responsive Workforce Development Program for Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Youth Experiencing Homelessness in Washington, DC.
This presentation will share key outcomes, implementation strategies, lessons learned, and future adaptations aimed at reducing barriers and promoting employment equity for TGNC youth. Us Helping Us is also exploring opportunities to expand the program and its impact.
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Conversations: Out Of Gender
'Out of Gender Conversations’ is an interactive training and workshop developed to offer insight, awareness, and care guidance for those providing care for LGBTQ+, gender variant communities and people.
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From Harm Reduction to Gender Joy: Advancing LGBTQ Health Equity Through Affirming Care for Transgender Youth
Using Oregon’s All-Payer All-Claims dataset (2016–2023), this analysis examines GAC utilization among transgender and gender-diverse adolescents, identifying disparities by insurance type, age, and sex assigned at birth—even within one of the nation’s most affirming policy environments. Quantitative findings are contextualized with lived experience: the journey of raising a ten-year-old transgender son, illustrating, through narrative and video excerpts, how timely, evidence-based, and affirming care fosters gender euphoria, confidence, safety, and family cohesion.
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SYNCing Integrated Care: Advancing LGBTQ+ Health and HIV Prevention through the CCBHC Model in a Community Behavioral Health Setting
Hillcrest Children and Family Center, a community-based behavioral health organization in Washington, DC, implemented the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) model to expand access and reduce disparities among underserved populations. Serving largely Black and LGBTQ+ communities, Hillcrest’s CCBHC initiative provides an integrated platform for behavioral health, primary care, and prevention services. This framework has strengthened culturally responsive care and enabled the agency to leverage programs, including Ryan White–funded HIV prevention and treatment, to advance health equity and justice.
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Breaking Barriers in HIV Prevention: Advancing PrEP Research While Rebuilding Trust in Black Communities
This presentation explores the evolution of HIV prevention through the perspective of a Black woman, Community Health Advocate, and clinical research participant deeply engaged in advancing PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) innovation. While biomedical advancements from daily oral PrEP to long acting injectables have expanded prevention options, Black communities remain underrepresented in research and disproportionately impacted by persistent barriers to access. Through a lived-experience narrative, this session examines how medical mistrust, historical trauma, and unequal power dynamics shape community attitudes toward clinical research and preventive care.
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Enhancing Service Delivery by Improving Referral Completion Rates for SDOH Needs
Closing the loop on Social Determinants of Health ensures that referrals to supportive services such as housing, food and mental health are not only initiated but also completed, tracked, and resolved, This approach strengthens care coordination, reduces barriers to retention, and promotes health equity by addressing non-medical factors that impact overall well being.
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From Position Paper to Advocacy: The Kentucky Nurses Association LGBTQ+ SNIPg (Special Nursing Interest Practice Group): Leadership Through Advocacy
As a nation, we had made great strides in protecting the basic rights of LGBTQ+ persons including their access to appropriate, quality care. For Kentucky LGBTQ+ persons, the passage of Kentucky SB 150 in 2023, progressively began the stripping away of these rights thus putting their well-being and even their lives at risk.
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Understanding Social Drivers of Health among People Living with HIV with Unsuppressed Viral Loads Visiting the Emergency Department
Despite the wide availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART) as an effective treatment option for HIV, a substantial portion of people with HIV (PWH) in the United States remain out of care or inconsistently take their medications, leading to an unsuppressed viral load despite diagnosis—a critical gap that undermines both individual health outcomes and public health objectives.
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Transgender Empathy Training: Transforming Understanding Into Action
Transgender Empathy Training is an interactive, community-centered educational program designed to cultivate cultural humility, deepen understanding, and expand institutional capacity to support transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people. Grounded in trauma-informed care, intersectional analysis, and lived experience, this training moves beyond basic terminology and policy compliance to build genuine human connection and sustained allyship.
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Unhoused and Unheard: Addressing Structural Racism and STI Risk in Queer Youth Care
This presentation examines how housing precarity and systemic bias shape clinical encounters with queer adolescents of color. Drawing from direct clinical practice, supervision, and education within urban community settings, it highlights the ways traditional care models often replicate inequities through rigid policies, pathologizing language, and a lack of intersectional awareness.
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Fostering Community within the Community: The Long-Term Survivors Hub for Older Adults Living with HIV
There is limited programming focused on the health and wellness of long-term survivors of HIV. With people living longer and their needs shifting, the number of resources that are available and accessible to seek care or even social interactions becomes scarce. The Long-Term Survivors Hub (LTS Hub) was created to continue to nurture and foster social engagement among older adults who have lived, worked, and fought for this community.
Commercial Support Acknowledgement
This conference is supported, in part, by independent educational grants from ineligible companies. A full list of supporters is available here. All accredited content has been developed and delivered in accordance with the ACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence and the criteria of Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education™, and is free of commercial bias.