By Matt Vanderwerf, Director of Human Resources, The Health Trust
At The Health Trust, we believe that health and well-being are fundamental human rights. Diving deeper into what that means has challenged many of my own assumptions about health equity. When I was asked to write a blog post for Pride Month I hesitated. I have learned so much about health equity and the fight for it during my time here. However, I work in HR. I usually stay in the shadows and leave difficult conversations to colleagues with deeper expertise.
Yet this year I find myself angry, outraged, and, by nature, opinionated. I now know that the fight for health equity requires all of us to participate and speak our truths. So here is mine.
Before coming to The Health Trust, I did not fully understand how much work remained to achieve health equity for LGBTQIA+ communities. I did not grasp how many people were being left behind because of the inequities deliberately woven into the systems meant to protect our most vulnerable populations. Through our HIV funding and advocacy work, I learned just how little attention is paid to LGBTQIA+ people of color, transgender individuals, different ethnic communities, low-income populations, and those living outside major urban centers.
I am a privileged, middle-class white gay man. Looking back, that privilege led me to wear rose-colored glasses. Fortunately, time, experience, and some healthy pessimisms have helped me set them down for good.
The LGBTQIA+ community faces attacks on multiple fronts. Through a health equity lens the scope is wide and includes everything from transgender people being vilified and persecuted to conversion therapy being upheld as a valid mental health treatment. These issues deserve the attention they receive and rightly generate headlines, public outcry, and advocacy efforts.
But if we look deeper, there is a health equity issue that does not get the same attention. In fact, part of the reason it persists is that too many of us, me included, have not paid enough attention.
In one of the most affluent regions of the world, tens of thousands of people are living with HIV. Many come from disadvantaged populations that struggle to access medical care, have economic hardship, or have other circumstances that make their management of it extremely difficult.
Managing HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was, but doing so successfully often requires support systems that many people simply do not have. Counties, health care providers, and nonprofit organizations work to provide these services, but the need is far greater than available resources. The AIDS crisis is holding on and it exists in our own neighborhoods.
In one of the epicenters of the fight for LGBTQIA+ equality we have left behind some of the most vulnerable among us. This means we have work to do to change the systems that have created gaps in health care for those who need it most. Advocacy demands that we center the voices, experiences and needs of those too often overlooked. I am reminded of this as I reflect on the challenges my community has faced and the progress we have fought to achieve.
Pride Month is a celebration the world sorely needs right now. Let’s celebrate, get the party started, and demonstrate our spirits are alive and well. Let's show that we will fight for the rights and equity we have won and refuse to let them silently slip away.
Then join me in remembering those that need our support and whose struggles rarely make the headlines. The Health Trust has helped me learn support is more than a social media post. It is volunteering. It is donating. It is contacting elected officials. It is educating ourselves about the challenges facing our neighbors and showing up when it matters. The tools of advocacy that created change in the past are still available to us today and we have a duty to use them.
Pick up the tools that came before us and keep fighting.
