In 2021, Howard Brown Health not only rose to the occasion in our pandemic response, we laid the
groundwork for the coming years. We began construction for our expanded presence in the city on the North and South Sides, launched new clinical programs, built out our clinical and support staff, and updated our mission and vision statements to guide our work into the future.
This guide describes best practices for community-based participatory research (CBPR) with transgender and nonbinary (TNB) communities. We hope it will be a resource for people involved or interested in TNB health research and will make CBPR approachable, actionable and compelling.
Howard Brown is proud to collaborate with the AMA Ed Hub™, an online platform bringing together high-quality education from the American Medical Association and other trusted sources, including Howard Brown. Designed to support the lifelong learning, licensure and certification needs of physicians and other health professionals, the AMA Ed Hub offers thousands of opportunities to earn CME, CEU, and MOC.
Overall LGBTQ+ individuals are 2.5 times more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and substance abuse compared to heterosexual individuals. Howard Brown Health worked in partnership with other community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide behavioral health services throughout Chicago to research and better understand barriers and facilitators to accessing affordable and LGBTQ+ affirming behavioral healthcare in the greater Chicago area. The research also illustrates unmet mental and behavioral healthcare needs and highlights existing gaps in LGBTQ+ affirming and affordable behavioral health services in Chicago.
Centering Community Care, Howard Brown Health’s 2021-2024 Strategic Plan, draws on the agency’s
decades of experience in healthcare delivery, public policy advocacy, and community engagement to
envision the next chapter of Howard Brown’s growth and community impact. With significant
progress made during its 2017-2020 Strategic Plan, which include establishing the Center for
Education, Research, and Advocacy (ERA) and expanding into underserved West and South side
areas of the city, Howard Brown is poised to strengthen its reach and impact in the years ahead.
Esta guía describe las mejores prácticas para la investigación participativa basada en la comunidad (CBPR, por sus siglas en inglés) con comunidades transgénero y no binarias (TNB, por sus siglas en inglés). Esperamos que sea un recurso para las personas involucradas o interesadas en la investigación de la salud en la comunidad TNB y que haga que la CBPR sea accesible, factible y convincente.
This report is part of a rapid response research project designed to better understand some of the experiences of trans and nonbinary (TNB) people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This preliminary report is based on our initial stages of analysis. The process of reducing abundant and dynamic narratives into a research report is difficult and always partial. We start with who we are, how we did our research, what we found, and what curiosities we have moving forward with our TNB-led health research. We honor each and every person that took the time to share their stories with us and feel deeply interconnected to each participant. There are many ways to interpret and tell these stories, and this is one of them.
The six frameworks were created and identified through feedback gathered from various Howard Brown Health staff members, Board of Directors members, and information collected through community feedback in advance of the strategic planning process.
Feedback on the first drafts of these descriptions was gathered from a large catchment of Howard Brown staff and stakeholders to ensure they were representative of the core values of Howard Brown. The frameworks were met with an overwhelming support and affirmation that these frameworks are core to the work of Howard Brown. The final drafts presented here incorporate edits obtained from these review sessions to ensure appropriate reading level utilized, inclusion of all components of Howard Brown service offerings, and appropriate representation of staff and patients.