• Share professional and lived experiences about SOGIECE in a supportive, affirming, and collaborative environment
• Identify key health and social service needs of SOGIECE survivors
• Exchange ideas about pan-North American interventions, including policy and advocacy work, public awareness & education, and improved supports for SOGIECE survivors
• Determine how research could be undertaken to fulsomely characterize the prevalence and nature of SOGIECE in Canada, as well as to inform interventions to prevent new harms and ameliorate ongoing negative health and social impacts of SOGIECE

By funding this work through the Community-Based Research Centre (CBRC), this event was a catalyst for broader research priorities around supporting the health and wellness needs of SOGIECE survivors. Through conducting in-depth interviews with survivors across Canada, researchers aim to shed light on the specific needs of this population to better support their long-term positive health outcomes.

Results:
Because the health of LGBTQ2S communities is an essential part of public health, the stories and collective expertise from the Vancouver Dialogue was used to form important research questions, with the aims of empowering survivors, identifying how to best support the health and wellness of LGBTQ2S youth and adult survivors, how to create institutional change, and what advocacy can be done to end SOGIECE practices in Canada.

The following are some of the outcomes and ongoing work being done:

• Researchers published a detailed report entitled Ending Conversion Therapy in Canada
• Advocacy around the conversion therapy conversation led to Prime Minister Trudeau issuing a mandate letter to Attorney General Lametti to “… amend the ‘Criminal Code’ to ban the practice of conversion therapy and take other steps required with the provinces and territories to end conversion therapy in Canada.”
• Ongoing interviews are being conducted across Canada to continue the research
• A second Dialogue event is being planned for Fall 2020

For more information, visit our website for a guest blog post from Dr Travis Salway Beyond the Ban: A Public Health Strategy to Eradicate Anti-2S/LGBTQ Practices and SOGIECE through the Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity.

The post Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression Change Efforts (SOGIECE) Dialogue Event and Research appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

Seeing change at the federal level

On December 13th, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided a mandate letter to David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General that included direction to change the Criminal Code to ban conversion therapy. This is the political will and action that has been central to this work. The change is not immediate though, nor is it guaranteed. There’s still work to be done to see it through. One of the most important things for us now, as we prepare for the federal bill, is to continue to voice to our elected officials that this is an important issue.

Call, write to, or visit your MP and MLA to tell them that this matters, that you’re watching, and that want to ensure that all levels of government hold these practices to account. Federal direction a fantastic start to change, but we can’t become complacent in our advocacy. Continue to speak out publicly about why sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts must not be accepted in Canada.

[See below for information on contacting elected officials]

Research that makes a difference in everyday lives

The research component of this work is being led by Dr Travis Salway. In November 2019, Dr Salway and collaborators brought together survivors, researchers, policy advocates, and community leaders in a dialogue event to launch this work. He and his team have been working since then to develop a report on what came out of that dialogue meeting.


Workshop notes from the 2019 Dialogue Event

That report will be released in early 2020 and sets the stage for additional short-term research projects by framing the questions that need answering. Questions like: where and how is conversion therapy happening in Canada, and to who; what social and health supports do survivors need; and, in areas where legislative bans are in place, how effective are they? In order to change the problem we have to first understand it from every angle. That is what this next phase of research is setting out to do. This is what our donors and supporters are making possible.

Our coalition of survivors, community leaders, researchers, and providers are enormously grateful to the BCCDC Foundation for their support in bringing together a big group of passionate change-makers for a first-of-its-kind event. The Dialogue allowed us to coalesce a number of ideas, reflections, and questions about SOGIECE that are critical to bringing an end to these harmful practices.
– Dr Travis Salway

We’re grateful to have been a part of this incredible work. Though our campaign is officially over, the Foundation will continue to support Dr Salway, survivors, and other partners in this journey. We hope you’ll continue to follow along and be involved, too. Great change is possible when we work together, and we’re so grateful to be able to work alongside so many amazing people fighting for this change.

Update: the report entitled “Ending conversion therapy in Canada: Survivors, community leaders, researchers, and allies address the current and future states of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts” can be found here.


To stay up to date on this work and more public health issues, sign up for our monthly newsletters. Or, follow along and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

How to contact your MP and MLA

Contact information for Members of Parliament
Contact information for BC Members of the Legislative Assembly
How to Address Elected Officials
Tips for writing a letter to an MP

The post Ending Conversion Therapy: Next Steps appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

When I was a teenager, I did my best to hide the fact that I was gay. I had a girlfriend and a buzzcut and avoided talking about topics that would raise the subject of sexuality. I was fortunate to have not attended ‘conversion therapy’, but looking back on it now, I’m not sure I would’ve passed up the opportunity had it been presented to me as an option.

‘Conversion therapy’ is a misnomer applied to practices that start from the premise that any sexual orientation other than heterosexual and any gender identity other than cisgender should be denied and suppressed, rather than affirmed and supported. These practices include things like pseudoscientific forms of psychotherapy, aversion or shock therapy, religious teachings, behavioral coaching, and delaying access to gender-affirming care.

And yes, they are still happening, in Canada, today.

My own experiences of societal norms, attitudes and sexuality have always driven my public health research. My doctoral research was on estimating rates of suicide among gay and bisexual men–and understanding why these rates are so high. In the spring of 2019, I was invited to make a statement before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, in support of their historic study on The Health of LGBTQIA2 Communities in Canada. When I asked the Committee policy analysts what they wanted to know, they said they understood that rates of suicide were unacceptably high in queer and trans communities, but they want to know what the federal government can do about it.

The federal government had just reviewed a petition from MP Sheri Benson to ban conversion therapy for minors in Canada. The petition had 18,200 signatures from across the country, signalling a strong desire among Canadians to end these practices. (in fact, a national poll conducted this year found that 58% of Canadians support a ban on conversion therapy.) The government responded by acknowledging that conversion therapy does not reflect the values of Canadians, or those of the federal government; however the petition was rejected on the basis that “this issue primarily implicates the regulation of the health profession, which is a provincial and territorial responsibility.” I responded by challenging the assumptions of the federal government’s rejection, specifically that the denouncement of conversion therapy by more than 49 health organizations has to-date not brought an end to conversion therapy. Therefore, more action is needed, at all levels of government.

MPs at the Committee hearing had no shortage of questions for me about what a federal ban on conversion therapy should look like. Ron McKinnon (Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam) asked, “first, I’d like to understand who is performing conversion therapy?…are these people doing this for hire or for profit?” He also wanted to know–acknowledging my statement that some people are taken to conversion therapy against their will–“who gets compelled [to attend conversion therapy], and how are they compelled?”

Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) asked, “in your view, does this answer [the federal government’s response to Benson’s petition] satisfy you, or would you like to see an explicit Criminal Code provision to ban conversion therapy?” Robert-Falcon Ouellette (Winnipeg Centre) wondered, “how many kids go out of the country [for conversion therapy]?”

My answers to these questions are limited by the scarcity of research on the topic in Canada. Therefore, I have spent much of the past year talking with conversion therapy survivors. In November, I convened a group of 31 survivors, community leaders, researchers, healthcare providers, religious leaders, and policy analysts to set the stage for research to better describe the prevalence and nature of conversion therapy (also known as SOGIECE, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts) in Canada, as well as the health and social service needs of survivors. In January 2020, we will begin in-depth interviews with survivors from across the country. Leaders of at least two of the federal parties have made election commitments to banning the practices. The policy-action iron is hot, and we are moving quickly to ensure that policy-makers have the data they need to enact effective policies.

Talking with survivors has helped me appreciate the scope and severity of ongoing conversion therapy practices in Canada. What could have been a reality for me–growing up in fear of society’s attitude toward my own sexual orientation–remains a threat for tens of thousands of Canadians. I hid my sexuality throughout my teenage years, and thereby averted opportunities for conversion therapy to be presented to me. Today, LGBTQ2 people are coming out at younger ages. While this is undoubtedly a sign of social progress, it also means that youth may be more vulnerable to conversion therapy because they are more visible than the LGBTQ2 youth of my generation were.

Conversion therapy practices are inhumane. They lead to years of psychological distress, and inhibit our ability to lead self-affirmed and self-actualized lives. In some cases, survivors have told me that they lost their ability to work and form relationships. Canadian youth deserve the opportunities to grow up confidently knowing that their sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions will be celebrated and supported. Achieving this vision of a fully LGBTQ2-affirming country requires empirical descriptions of ongoing conversion therapy practices that will in turn enable us to end conversion therapy, once and for all.

If you want to support Travis’ work, make a tax-deductible gift to our crowdfunding campaign before December 31st. Donations will support his work in conducting research on conversion therapy and ensuring that LGBTQ2+ youth are protected from these inhuman practices.

The post The Threat & Reality of Conversion Therapy in Canada appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

What does conversion therapy have to do with public health? Public health is about preventing disease and injury, promoting health, ensuring that everyone has the same opportunities to achieve their optimal health (health equity), and the recognition that social factors do have an impact on our health outcomes over our lifespan (or, social determinants of health).

Members of LGBTQ2S+ communities already face health disparities ranging from disproportionate rates of HIV to higher rates of mental health and substance use challenges. Conversion therapy deliberately targets members of these communities, further exacerbating the health inequities they face as a population, and compounding their negative health outcomes. For example, a gay man who is HIV positive, who has also experienced conversion therapy will face a host of compounding inequities that will impact his health over his lifetime. To generalize, it will be harder for him to access appropriate health supports and improve his health than for a heterosexual man who hasn’t been through conversion therapy, or who doesn’t have HIV.

Or, consider a trans woman of colour who experiences poverty, perhaps because she was forced to leave her home at a young age when she came out to her family, and subsequently lived through conversion therapy. Here, her social determinants of health like her race, income, housing status, and gender identity are all factors that impact the healthcare she receives, and put her at risk of poorer health. One of the purposes of public health is to identify and address those disparities and inequities. Public health allows us to take those individual stories and experiences of trauma and address them at a systemic level, doing more good for more people. Instead of just improving health for one person, we can do it for populations.

So, there’s hope. There are people right here in BC and across North America fighting for change, fighting to protect future LGBTQ2S youth and adults from being subjected to these practices, working to ensure that future generations don’t face these same kind of systemic or institutional inequities. For those who have already lived through it, we want to best support them.

We need to know what support survivors need, where they need it, and how we can get it to them. This may sound obvious but a few ideas that were considered on Saturday were the need for peer supports, so survivors feel comfortable with their support worker and aren’t re-victimized by having to engage with a healthcare provider. And, considering the impacts of colonization and racism on Two-Spirit survivors, and examining the role that residential schools played in conversion therapy. What about new comers to Canada who may have experienced conversion therapy in their home countries? What services are they already accessing when they arrive here, how can help be offered to them in a place they already are and in a way that’s both culturally relevant and safe?

These questions haven’t been formally asked in relation to conversion therapy before. We don’t even know what questions to ask necessarily. At the event, I posed a question to my small working-group: “is there any formal training in school for psychologists, counselors, or physicians in how to help survivors of conversion therapy?” Silence. One of my group mates, an academic who is working in this area, eventually said “no, it’s mentioned that it’s happening but not how to meet the needs of patients who have experienced it”.

This is why the Foundation is running its campaign. These questions have to be answered. Survivors and all LGBTQ2S+ people deserve the opportunity to access and achieve their best health. I know that because of my privilege, I’m afforded more of those opportunities—why should anyone else be denied that? Please, join me in making that possible. Make a gift to support the health of survivors, and action to make sure future generations never have to experience it.

You can also help by sharing this post on social media and tagging us @bccdcfoundation, and by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post Reflections: Conversion Therapy Survivors Dialogue – Part 2 appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

November 2nd was a day I had been looking forward to for the past 7 weeks. On that remarkably crisp and sunny November morning, I was lucky enough to be allowed to attend a private dialogue event of individuals, researchers, allies and activists, leaders, and policy whizzes who were all experts in their own ways on one topic: conversion therapy. I do want to acknowledge that I was allowed to be there. This was a private event on a topic that is highly charged, deeply personal, and rife with emotions for many in the room. As a heterosexual cisgender fundraiser without lived experience, it was a privilege to be able to attend and engage. I’m very grateful my fellow attendees welcomed my presence as an ally.

A quick definition to explain what I’m talking about: we use the term “conversion therapy” to describe sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts (SOGICE). That’s a mouthful, but it’s exactly what it describes: trying to change, convert, or “repair” one’s sexual identity to heterosexuality, or trying to change one’s gender identity to cisgender. “Conversion therapy” is far from a perfect descriptor, but it seems to be the most familiar terminology.

I was invited to attend on behalf of the BCCDC Foundation because of our role in supporting the work that was to take place in the room that day and subsequent work to come. At the Foundation, it’s our job to understand the issue or project for which we’re fundraising in order to galvanize support around it. Being able to attend this dialogue event was the chance to see our donors’ generosity in action and use what I learned there to advance the work.

I’m embarrassed to admit that prior to speaking with Dr Travis Salway (social epidemiologist and researcher at the BCCDC who is leading this work) in September, I had no idea that conversion therapy was still being practiced in Canada. Sure, I had heard of it before, but I thought there was no way this was still happening in 2019. Not a chance, I thought. I also thought that these were practices that happened solely in religious contexts. No way would a licensed medical practitioner impose this on patients seeking support.

On both accounts I was very, very wrong.

I have since learned that conversion therapy is happening right now in Canada. There are known groups and institutions operating across the country, and many more individuals unknown to us. And there is a history of health practitioners–doctors, social workers, counsellors, and therapists under the public healthcare system and privately–who have perpetuated these practices. Nearly everything I thought I knew about conversion therapy was wrong.

The purpose of the event was to develop the ideas that would catalyze novel research on the health needs of survivors and identify policy and legislative paths to end conversion therapy in North America.

There were 32 of us in attendance, and half of us had personal experience of conversion therapy. Everybody’s story, perspective, and role was different, but as a few folks in our group pointed out: despite our differences, we all had a shared commonality between us. We all know that survivors need to be heard, that conversion therapy causes deep harm, and we have to end it.

In preparing for the event, I did my research. I read testimonials and articles by survivors who described what they went through as torture; I watched films about the damage it causes; and I reviewed statistics like an estimated 20,000 LGBTQ2+ Canadians have been exposed to conversion therapy and how one third of survivors have attempted suicide. I understood the issue, the impacts it has, and why this is an important health and policy issue that we need to address. But I didn’t really grasp what that meant on a human level until I sat across from the folks who had lived it.

A lot of our work was focused and goal oriented–discussing what supports survivors need, what institutional change can look like, policy and legislative action options, and how do we communicate about this to the public to raise awareness and garner support. Interspersed with this, folks shared what they experienced and their challenges coming out of conversion therapy. Their stories ranged, but they were consistently heart-wrenching. I struggled to control the lump in my throat more than once, listening to the vulnerability of these perfect strangers sharing some of their greatest pains.

What I took away from their stories is that their trauma is not something that is experienced in a singular moment, or on a particular day. It’s not like a car crash; there isn’t a moment of impact where injury is sustained, followed by stillness, and then care and attention can be administered for healing to begin.

With this kind of trauma, the stillness doesn’t necessarily come. The injury continues, ongoing, often for years. One is left in a sustained moment-of-impact, where care and healing is attempted, but how can we heal if we’re being continuously re-injured?

What I witnessed was a group of incredibly brave people, of different backgrounds and identities, trying to still–years later–find their way through that injury to heal.

For those who have survived, the damages to identity, self-worth, and mental well-being linger. And then there’s some who haven’t.

This isn’t to characterize all as victims. Despite the immense pain they’ve endured, there was also amazing resilience in the room. Finding the strength to be there and share their stories takes real bravery and power. And that bravery and commitment to galvanize change for the better was what was truly inspiring. It’s because of that, that I know the changes and support we’re seeking are possible.

But what does this have to do with public health, and why we as a public health charity were there? Stay tuned for part 2 of my reflections where I’ll dig deeper into the “bigger picture” takeaways from this event. If you want to spur change now, join the movement, and make sure thousands of survivors can access the justice and support they need. You can make a gift to support this work, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we’re talking a lot about this issue.

Continue reading part 2 of Katie’s reflections.

The post Reflections: Conversion Therapy Survivors Dialogue – Part 1 appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

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