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Nancy Lynch
R.U.1.2? Gets Serious About Health
R.U.1.2? Gets
Serious About Health
HIV Grant Funds "Health
& Wellness" Position
by Ric Kasini Kadour
R.U.1.2?
Queer Community Center in Burlington hired a Health and Wellness Coordinator
in March. The new position will oversee programs that promote and build
community around the health of gay men, bisexuals, lesbians, and transgender
people.
"What we’re trying to do
is put a lot of focused energy to creating a community that cares about
the health of the whole community, but also about the individuals in the
community," said R.U.1.2? Executive Director Christopher Kaufman.
The Center will develop programs addressing HIV, tobacco, women’s
health, and cultural competency among care providers.
Health programming at R.U.1.2? is not completely
new.
"We've had health care programming
at the center for pretty much its entire history, going back to the first
year when the Vermont Diversity Health Project (VDHP) was started here,"
Kaufman insisted. VDHP works to identify and train queer-friendly health
care providers and publishes the resource guide Our Bodies, Our Minds.
Last year, the queer community center took
over VTM4M, an internet outreach program that focuses on HIV prevention.
Center staff identified as "peer outreach workers" spend time
in online communities and chatrooms to offer information and support for
men. R.U.1.2? also partners with Vermont CARES to offer HIV testing.
R.U.1.2? had not taken a comprehensive
approach to health in the past. Limited resources and staffing prevented
the organization from addressing policy issues, creating partnerships
with other organizations, and participating in the larger, national queer
health movement. In January, the center applied for and received an HIV-prevention
grant from the Vermont Department of Health that funds the Health and
Wellness Coordinator position.
In March, Kaufman hired Shawn Lipensky
(see sidebar). Lipensky will oversee an expansion of the center's programs
that primarily focuses on HIV prevention, but is slated to include a greater
emphasis on lesbian and bisexual women's health (as soon as funding becomes
available), and working with the transgender community on educating health
care providers.
"It's a brand new position, so it can
mean a lot of different things," said Lipensky. "The majority
of the stuff is going to be HIV prevention, education, outreach."
Peggy Luhrs is an Americorps-VISTA
volunteer who was hired as R.U.1.2?'s cyber-center coordinator. She is
currently researching programming and funding opportunities for women’s
health initiatives at the center. Luhrs is the center's only paid lesbian
staff member.
"I hope at R.U.1.2? we'll emulate,
to some degree, what has already been done here, which is speaking to
providers about being culturally competent; to do a lesbian on-line health
digest; to set up support groups; and do education," said Luhrs.
"I would like to focus on wellness, not just pathology."
Lipensky also plans to focus on wellness.
"I really want to be able to incorporate other issues of health and
wellness," said Lipensky. "I have already been in contact with
a yoga person to come into the center once or twice a month for free.
I want to get that up and running. As the warm weather approaches, I want
to see some more outdoor physical activities. It's going to be challenging.
I don't know if there'll be a lot of interest, but I hope to generate
interest. It can be used as physical activity and as a social event as
well."
The focus beyond pathology and including
wellness is a step in the right direction for R.U.1.2?. Health programming
in Vermont has largely been limited to responding to particular issues
such as HIV or domestic violence. The effect of issue-oriented programming
is that queer people are treated as vectors for disease transmission or
as potential victims.
Wellness programs, which promote the acquisition of healthy habits, go
a little further in acknowledging whole people, but are often still about
pathology. Physical exercise becomes heart disease awareness. Nutrition
education becomes obesity prevention.
There is nothing wrong per se with
this approach, but lacking is a deeper, more fundamental cultural change.
The poor health indicators of queer people cannot be explained by the
lack of gay-friendly doctors and rainbow-colored anti-smoking posters.
North American health educators and activists
have been working for nearly ten years now to build a queer health movement
that addresses not only the lack of public health infrastructure accessible
to queer people – health departments that track queer health data
and funding streams that address our needs – but also the individual
and social dynamics of queer people that result in us having poorer health
indicators than the general population.
The degree to which R.U.1.2?
can embrace the whole health approach will be the degree to which they
are successful building healthier communities in Vermont. Recent developments
are a step forward.
Ric Kasini Kadour is a freelance writer and the moderator of the Gay
Men's Health Summit eList, an online discussion of gay men's health issues.
He lives in Montreal.
 |
Shawn
Lipensky: Health and Wellness Coordinator |
As
the lead person on R.U.1.2?'s health programming, new Health and Wellness
Coordinator Shawn Lipensky’s got quite a job ahead of him.
In the first few weeks on the job, Lipensky
has been meeting with community and government agencies. The funding for
his position comes from a Vermont Department of Health HIV prevention
grant; thus a significant focus will be implementing an outreach program
based on the peer-opinion-leader model developed by the University of
Wisconsin called Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions, or DEBI
for short.
Briefly, the DEBI model involves a trainer
identifying community leaders and teaching them specific skills and techniques
for discussing and encouraging safer-sex behaviors among their peers.
Part of the grant will pay for training Lipensky in the model.
The 30-year-old actor earned his B.A. in
theatre from American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City and
has been living in Burlington for three and a half years.
"I came from New York City, where I
was a performer in musical theater. I was doing a lot of sketch comedy
and some short films and things like that," said Lipensky. "I
still do a lot of that stuff here. I just get to do it more on my own
terms." He is currently working on two different shows: a live stage
version of The Breakfast Club and the Spielpalast Kabarett.
Health programming is a new thing for Lipensky,
who is experiencing a steep learning curve while attempting to meet program
goals set by funders.
"I just had to jump in," he said
of his new job. "Balancing everything is a big chore right now. I
want to be able to meet the needs of a lot of different people."
His biggest surprise so far has been just
how far Vermont has to go on improving queer health.
"I thought people were more educated
on gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, just in queer health issues,"
he said. "There's still a lot of homophobia out in the medical world."
Lipensky is in a committed relationship
with Seven Days Art Director Don Eggert, who co-founded R.U.1.2?.