“Queering the Social Determinants of Health” Opens SDRC 41st Anniversary Webinar Series

How do we solve a problem like LGBTQ+ access to health services?

This is what Dr. Cameron McKenzie, a social worker and assistant professor from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, set out to do in the first webinar in SDRC’s 41^st Anniversary Series. Held on July 31, 2020 via Zoom and Facebook Live, the event was a venue for Dr. McKenzie to discuss “Queering the Social Determinants of Health,” from a Canadian perspective. The webinar had over 30 Zoom attendees and more than 350 FB Live streaming views, reaching as far south as Capiz, Davao and Zamboanga.

Beginning with an interactive exercise to determine the factors that contribute to good health, Dr. McKenzie examined how health is viewed in medical, behavioral, social and structural contexts, and how health perception influences people’s interactions. Furthermore, he stressed how health policies bear greatly on people’s lives, and cited the Black Report (United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care, 1980) as a significant document calling attention to the negative effects of social inequity on people’s health, and the need to overhaul the manner in which health services are distributed.

After sharing graphics dramatizing the growing income disparity in Toronto and its consequences on health, Dr. McKenzie proceeded to explain why LGBTQ+ needed to become a social determinant of health: The LGBTQ+ community faces barriers to accessing health services, it faces greater mental health issues, and its members are mostly of lower socioeconomic status. He cited two recently conducted studies to investigate how this situation was being addressed. The first,   “LGBTQ+ and Ontario’s Health Care Policies and Programs,” revealed that there was little or no recognition of LGBTQ+-specific population health needs, beyond HIV/AIDS and mental health; and the second, “Perceptions and Experiences with Funding and Policymaking for LGBTQ+ Organizations,” indicated that current funding provided is inadequate for services that are needed, and that “community consultation” with government is limited, at best.

The solution offered in his presentation was to encourage social and political movements that would shift power to the marginalized; to recognize the power imbalances and structural inequities that exist in communities; and to identify and understand all of the aspects that affect health.  Dr. McKenzie entertained questions during the brief forum that followed, which involved how the LGBTQ+ community perceives health services and quality of care (“very much inadequate”), the state of the LGBTQ+ community during the COVID-19 pandemic (“isolated and unable to avail of services, still socially excluded”), and whether conditions for the LGBTQ+ community have improved in 2020 since the two 2017 studies were conducted (“2020 is an odd year, but hopefully there will be some improvements down the road”).

The theme of the SDRC 41^st Anniversary celebration is “Reducing Disparities, Sustaining Solutions.”