PHI news
The Texas Health Institute hosted this LGBTQIA+-focused webinar series. The first session, recorded on November 30, 2022, is centered on Monkey Pox Strategies to mitigate its spread using lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The second session from February 8, 2023, titled Health Equity: An Essential Component for Quality Improvement February 8, 2023, is on health equity as it relates to social justice in health; that is, everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Quality Improvement (QI) can be used as a framework to advance health equity work within health departments. The third session, Why Care: Understanding Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression, was recorded on April 19, 2023. Collecting Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity information (SOGI) is one way for health departments and their community partners to help understand the population and how to improve their health outcomes. The first step is understanding the terminology and the population demographics. The second step is putting “Best Practices in Collecting SOGI” information into place. The fourth and final session, Why Care: Best Practices in Collecting Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGI) Information, recorded on June 21, 2023, gives tips for standardizing data handling across programs so that health departments can improve the quality and generalizability of their data, more easily disaggregate it, and gain actionable insights into local health disparities including work with the LGBTQ+ community.