Adrian Shanker, executive director of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown, is in North Carolina this week presenting information about health disparities for LGBT people in Pennsylvania. The information is part of the first statewide data collection on LGBT health.
He made the trip for the Society for Public Health Educators, a national conference hosted this year in Charlotte. The location had been established long before North Carolina passed a sweeping anti-LGBT bill last week.
“We took this information to the conference because there is value in highlighting the work we’re doing as a public health model,” Shanker told PGN. He said there were a couple other LGBT-related topics on the agenda and the conference organizers put out a resolution calling on North Carolina to foster an inclusive environment for its LGBT residents and visitors.
“It’s important to remember that Charlotte was on the right side of history,” he said, noting that city’s passage of an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination law is what prompted the state to pass a bill overriding it. “It was the legislature and the governor who are on the wrong side of history.”
“There are a lot of really excellent LGBT leaders in Charlotte,” Shanker said. “They need the support of the national LGBT movement.”
“It’s important to be supportive of LGBT people who live here and have to stay here,” he continued. “It’s easy to think it’d be better to be an activist in a more progressive state. But we need activists in states where we have work to do. I think we have to honor the people working hard for change in North Carolina.”
North Carolina’s new law, which is already facing court challenges, bars local communities from passing LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination laws and prohibits transgender people from using the restrooms that align with their gender identity.
For his part at the Charlotte conference, Shanker presented information with the Pennsylvania Department of Health from surveys completed by LGBT people in Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley. They got more than 600 responses.
The data show tobacco usage, cancer screenings and obesity as major concerns in the LGBT communities in those areas, despite the fact that respondents said they perceived suicide and mental health as the biggest disparities for LGBT people.
Shanker said 48 percent of transgender respondents said they smoke, which is double the rate of the general population. Smoking can lead to the 12 most-common types of cancer, Shanker said. Trans men were also 20-percent less likely than cisgender women to have mammograms and Pap smears.
The state invested $50,000 last year in the LGBT health-data collection and plans to invest another $60,000 for similar collections in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Erie to take place later this year.
“One of the biggest challenges for LGBT health equity is we don’t have the data to back up what we see as health disparities in our communities,” Shanker said. “That has a tremendous impact on our community.”
Shanker said Bradbury-Sullivan is overseeing the data collection and has partnered with LGBT centers across the state, including the William Way LGBT Community Center, Persad Center, LGBT Center of Central PA and Upper Delaware LGBT Center.