Pride: Stronger Together | Healthcare Discrimination with Tegan and Sara

[Music] hello uh Happy Pride I am Admiral Rachel LaVine and I'm the assistant secretary for health at the United States Department of Health and Human Services and we are so excited today to have tan and Sarah here uh for one of our pride sessions um tan and Sarah Quinn uh they are musicians they are activists and they are founders of the te and SED Foundation welcome it's nice to meet you all thank you so much for having us happy Pride happy Pride thank you so much for joining us I'm sure we'll have a great talk so you know one of the topics that we're emphasizing of course is Health Equity uh and lgbtqia plus Health Equity so if you could name one Health topic one lgbtqi plus Health topic that is important to you all you know we started our foundation eight years ago one of the pillars of of our foundation was health and specifically we were just kind of shocked when we heard how few lgbtq people advocate for themselves when it comes to health care you know like 75% of lesbians uh avoid or postpone you know going to the doctors and then of course is we started to learn more about transgender people and their expens experience at the doctors and how much educating they were having to do when they were there if they were even given or granted care um it just was really obvious to us that we needed to to spend a lot of time focusing on that and trying to figure out ways that we could contribute to changing um that for for our amazing lgbtq Community we're also in a really unique position because we're Canadian and we live in Canada and our foundation works both in the United States and in Canada and we have really different landscapes for healthcare so in Canada you know every single person receives a general you know you can receive Health Care uh no matter who you are how much money you make I mean like care can certainly there's a spectrum and there's you know certainly um you know economic uh circumstances play a role if you can if you live in certain neighborhoods or you can advocate for yourself or you can pay for privatized care your Healthcare may be better but in Canada at a baseline you're not going to go to the doctor and have to like lose your car or you know go into debt or whatever so we are always really um uh sensitive about the fact that we are sort of navigating to really different Healthcare Landscapes but also they intersect in other ways so even in Canada you know you're going to see the TS lgbtq plus Community facing really unique challenges even with you know uh healthc care available and in the United States we have to sort of be more nuanced about the programs and the sort of um you know the organizations that we support because the health care problems or the issues are totally different and can be you know unique obstacles even just like state to state so you know Healthcare is it's it's definitely the most complicated and sort of textured areas that we focus on with our foundation but I think it is one of the ones that we're most passionate about and we very specifically focused on this idea that at the ve at the very start if you need some kind of health care or mental health care professional in your life just finding them can be the most you know daunting obstacle and so one of our programs at the foundation was actually just taking um a sort of holistic approach like if we can just connect the dots between a healthare provider and someone in the community we've already sort of we've already like got past one of the biggest obstacles so we started this program G it was many many years ago I can't believe how long it has taken us but we wanted to create a health care directory that very simple Health Care directory where you could just go in say where you're say where you're located and what you're looking for and we can connect the dots between you and a culturally competent healthcare provider that to that to me was the simplest simplest goal and we want to expand our work outward from there but that is something that we're really proud of well that's fantastic and the work of your foundation is helping so many people both in Canada and in the United States what are some of the health disparities for the lgbtqi plus Community uh that you have seen you mentioned a couple but what others have you seen uh particularly in your travels across the United States I mean one of the things we heard um in the first year that we started the foundation we spent a lot of that year traveling around meeting with Grassroots lgbtq organizations and trying to figure out where the gaps were for them was just that for a lot of us at the top of the pyramid and I say the top of the pyramid because we're cisgendered we're from Canada we're white um we have been very successful in our career was that I was like the world's getting better we've got gay marriage everyone loves gay people now and we started traveling around and people like yeah no that's not what's happening you know the majority of stories you read about or hear about the representation we have in the media is often negative and when you look at how that trickles down to actual people in the community it affects the way they advocate for themselves so what we kept hearing over and over again was that yes it's wonderful that we have gay marriage but for the average lgbtq person they're still facing you know um inequality at work inequality you know um in their social world they're seeing less of themselves represented what representation they're seeing is negative they're not being accepted by family and friends still they don't have Community spaces because those are being washed away because you know people don't go to the bar in the same way like it's just one thing after another and what that does is make people not feel like advocating for themselves they don't see themselves represented so they don't think that they deserve to be there or that they belong there they don't see proper uh culturally competent care from their health care providers so they avoid going you know at school they're questioning or feeling insecure uncomfortable with themselves and there's no resources or access to resources or the access to resources that are there are being argued about by politicians to be restricted and removed and and this just amounted to a lot of discomfort and a lack of care for themselves and when we heard that it was just like how can we focus and make sure our mission is hitting all these really crucial pillars to bolster and and get support and and resources to these young people and just other community members so they can advocate for themselves mental health was the big one initially because there were these wonderful Grassroots organizations which we still fund um they became really uh important during covid that we're doing things just like having movie Nights you know just bringing the community together to say like here are a bunch of other people who have the same issues or the same interests as you who identify the same as you um you know one of our big programs is lgbtq summer camps and it seems kind of silly because it's like ah summer camp but for a lot of these lgbtq plus youth this is the first time they're not just seeing other youth like them but adults like them you know to be young and na see anyone who looks like you anyone who is like you it makes you feel alone and mentally we could see that that was really still affecting the young lgbtq population so a lot of our Focus was on how do we make them see that they're wonderful and amazing and there's lots of us out there like that and if we could just connect them to people like us they could have hope for their future and take better care of themselves absolutely so thank you for emphasizing on the mental health aspects you know we tend to focus on physical health but mental health is critically important uh but also thank you for highlighting the importance of representation you know representation matters it matters in music it matters in the other Arts it matters in terms of healthcare and in your in our governments as well so representation is so important important so you know um you talked about Pride uh for me uh you talked about Hope Pride for me means hope and hope for the future um if both of you could comment what does pride mean for you you know it's funny I actually was just before this lovely conversation I was just putting down my thoughts about Pride this year because I have always been a bit of a contrarian about Pride I mean I I love the roots of Pride like our in protest and in this sort of like bringing together the community in this like really authentic way to celebrate each other to talk about what needs to be done in the future and you know all of these types of things but to see it sort of becomes so commercialized i' I've I've resisted it the more and I I want to see it as a good thing but I I can't help but sometimes feel um you know I don't know like I like there's like some part of me that wants it to still be ours or or or wants it to still be rooted in these these things of you know this is this is rebellion this is protest this is this is about about advancing you know the work that we're doing this is about um you know this is about uh I don't know like it's it to me it's it's it's still sort of this like it's this really like fraught thing but this year feels different to me because I'm a parent and I have a son and I have been thinking about how moving it is to me to it's it makes me sad but it it's moving to me that I am a part of a generation that I was able to marry my wife I was able to have a son when when he was born I went online a week after he was born and filled out you know his the information for his birth certificate and no one ever doubted that that you know my my wife and I are the parents nobody I didn't have to adopt him I didn't have to prove anything I just put it down and then a few weeks later a beautiful birth certificate from the Canadian government arrived and I this year I find myself thinking about all the people who came before us that made that happen and that I am part of a very small minority who will experience this you know that that there's just generations of people who didn't get to have even the simplest bureaucratic experience of getting to like fill out a form and receive a document that says that you know they are that they're married or that they're the parents of their child and so I'm thinking about that in with pride this year that that we have made huge huge achievements like you know advances and that we have made these achievements and we should be proud of them um but we also have to think about all the people who still don't have access to those rights and they're human rights these aren't these aren't I don't think of them as privileges I think of them as rights and it's important to remember that I think during Pride absolutely gosh I mean for me it definitely Pride means a lot of different things protest is huge of course and community building is also huge and um you know just the celebration aspect of it I I do think is is so important I think for me this year it's it's Community that's on my mind for sure and probably visibility is the big one for me pride is about being visible a lot of us pass as straight straight people I guess you I mean most of the year like I mean I think I'm really gay seeming but often every time I get into a car with a stranger and they ask me what my husband does I'm aware that I clearly don't look as gay as I think I do but I think that I realized that for a lot of the year I don't think about my queerness and I don't you know I mean obviously we do so much work with our band and with our foundation so I shouldn't be too hard on myself but to me the month of June becomes a month where I think about visibility and how can we continue to make sure that we're very visible and we're very outspoken I'm just painfully aware that there are just so many people who still struggle in our community who still have to be invisible who aren't comfortable coming out or are restricted in terms of how they can be out and I try to make sure that during this month I'm thinking about that and being compassionate about that and and um yeah I think as we see roll backs and attacks on our rights it's really important to stay loud and proud and be out there and um and again to infuse as much positivity into the way that our community is covered in the news and the media because it is often so negative and we have just seen uh stratospheric jumps in suicidality and and depression and loneliness in young lgbtq people because that's what they see they still think of themselves as a problem something to be fixed and for me pride month is about saying there's nothing wrong with you you're perfect the way you are and there's millions and millions and millions of us and we're not going to stop fighting to protect you well that's exactly right you know um it is hope for the future but challenges that we have now that aspect of protest I I think has always been part of Pride um visibility and you know our theme for pride uh this year is stronger together and clearly you know with all of us working together we are stronger together and have to stay together um as we work uh for progress and equity and equality so thank you so much what a fantastic conversation we very much appreciate your being here uh congratulations on the birth of your of your son and uh it was so great to talk with you thank you so much for having us thank you uh for coming to this session um and again we are stronger together and it's all about [Music] Pride produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services

Channel: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Views: 240

Keywords: USGovHHS, HHSgov, HHS, HHS.gov, Health, Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Health equity, LGBTQ, Rachel Levine, pride, Tegan and Sara, LGBTQI health, healthcare

Id: 0q5E0OnwKcY

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024