From the organizing team in Chicago! They're looking for folks to sign on to the vision sketched out below. If you're down, send an email to the organizers to sign your name! (info below)

Please join us for

LGBTI Health Through the Life Course

The 2009 National LGBTI Health Summit, in conjunction with the BiHealth Summit

August 14 – 18, 2009 in Chicago

We ask that individuals endorse the Summit, its philosophy, and its objectives. We are not asking for organizational endorsements at this time. By endorsing the event as an individual, you are simply voicing your backing for the mission embraced by the Summit, and no other form of sponsorship or participation is required.

Endorsers: please send your name and location to Pete Subkoviak at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago – Psubkoviak@aidschicago.org

About the Summit

The 2009 National LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex) Health Summit is an event dedicated to preserving and improving the emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, psychological, environmental, and social health and wellness of LGBTI people, a population that continues to experience significant health disparities because of its members’ sexual orientations and/or gender identities.

We welcome all individuals who support the health and well-being of LGBTI people as well as all members of the community (no previous health experience necessary) to explore what it means to be a healthy LGBTI person, living in a healthy LGBTI community.

We invite you to spend a few days in Chicago working intensively with colleagues from all over the nation and world who are grappling with similar challenges, and engage in deep thinking and extended discussion about innovative programming related to the theme of “LGBTI Health Through the Life Course.”

We are especially excited to be holding this summit in the year marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the event frequently cited as the beginning of the LGBTI rights movement. The Stonewall Riots was a series of spontaneous, raucous demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn of New York City. in response to a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and started the modern gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

This summit is different from traditional health conferences. Our LGBTI Health Summits (previously in Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and most recently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) have been described as nurturing retreats, exciting and intense think tanks, and an event of great enlightenment. Participants come away with a renewed passion for the cause, energized and inspired to tackle the problems confronting LGBTI health and wellness.

The Summit is a chance for all participants to reach out across differences in sexual and gender identity, ethnicity, race, age, and socioeconomic status and begin to work toward common goals. We avoid a focus on celebrities and big names, and we take plenty of time to relax, have fun, and make meaningful contact with other participants.

While the summit will include speakers, panels, workshops, pre-summit institutes and organizing meetings, it will also include interactive exercises, such as experiential education activities, yoga and other forms of self and communal care, as well as creative festivities. The Summit will address a range of topics that includes, but is not limited to:

• LGBTI health through the life course
• Understanding LGBTI history and its health impacts
• Wellness for all of our communities
• Bisexual visibility & well-being
• Health leadership
• Health care access
• Frontiers in HIV/AIDS and STD prevention and care
• New HIV prevention technologies like microbicides and PrEP
• Youth and elder strategies
• Tobacco and LGBTI health
• The role of alcohol and other substances in LGBTI communities
• Universal Health Care and other paths to good LGBTI health
• LGBTI Spirituality and its role in the health of individuals and communities
• Culturally competent LGBTI mental health research and programming
• Self-care for the community organizer
• Marriage equality as a health strategy
• Addressing racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia to enable healing
• Diversity of family structures as a part of LGBTI health
• Understanding our identities and our bodies: what does it mean to be L,G,B,T or I?

The BiHealth Summit

The BiHealth Summit will bring together professionals, advocates, activists, and allies of bisexual health concerns for updates on the field, movement-building, and strategizing about future directions and collaborations. The BiHealth Summit will be both a concentrated event and a broader presence within the LGBTI Health Summit.

Who We Are

The LGBTI Health Summit includes a diverse group of health educators, healthcare providers, policy makers, activists, grassroots organizers, advocates, people with HIV, and members of diverse LGBTI communities with powerful concerns about the ways current health challenges and sociopolitical trends will impact our communities in the months and years to come.

We come from different locations, cultures, class backgrounds, generations, and professions, and we identify in myriad ways, but we share a common interest in improving LGBTI health and wellness, strengthening our local communities and subcultures, and enlisting service providers, activists, health professionals, researchers, sex workers, spiritual leaders, writers, allies, and cultural workers in our efforts.

We know that language can be problematic, and that many people do not identify with terms such as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Our summit strives to welcome those who identify otherwise--as queer, genderqueer, same-gender loving, and a wide diversity of other sexual and gender identities. We also embrace those who may not fit any of the above, but are allies in this cause.

We believe it is critically important for all of us to join together, commemorate our collective triumphs, and strategically address in new and innovative ways the core challenges facing our communities.

As with previous summits, the 2009 National LGBTI Health Summit, in collaboration with the BiHealth Summit, is a grassroots organizing effort with very ambitious aims. It is organized by dedicated volunteers from all parts of the country who work together to handle logistics, program planning, fundraising, publicity, and housing.

It is imperative that everyone plan now to attend this event.

We Need You

The Summit needs the input of those who face daunting questions and formidable challenges as well as those who have succeeded in creating effective programs and campaigns related to LGBTI health and wellness. We welcome activists as well as researchers, doctors as well as holistic health practitioners, religious and spiritual leaders as well as sex workers. Most of all, we request the participation of ordinary LGBTI-identified people who will share their valuable experiences, questions, and energy as we build a movement around community health and empowerment. We welcome all individuals who support the health and well-being of LGBTI people and all members of the community (no previous health experience necessary) to explore what it means to be a healthy LGBTI person, living in a healthy LGBTI community.

Registration and a call for abstracts will be announced in the first quarter of 2009. In the meantime, you can stay abreast of our work by contacting Cat Jefcoat at CatJ@howardbrown.org or Jim Pickett at JPickett@aidschicago.org. We will be disseminating information about the Summit widely as details are finalized. Please stay tuned.

Thank you, and see you in Chicago, August 14 – 18, 2009!
The Chicago Host Committee of the 2009 National LGBTI Health Summit