My name is Vanessa Kitzie, an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. We’re looking for LGBTQIA+ community leaders currently residing in Indiana to participate in a half-day community forum on Saturday, August 22nd from 10 am - 2 pm EST at the Allen County Library - Fort Wayne, IN. The forum will focus on improving services to LGBTQ+ populations for health promotion and is part of a larger Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Early Career Research Grant. 

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In this study, “community” means a group of LGBTQIA+ people who come together to engage in a series of shared activities, which may or may not relate to their LGBTQIA+ identities. Communities can gather physically, virtually, or both. Community members should either be based in Ohio, if they convene virtually, or have at least some of their gatherings in Ohio, if they convene physically. Communities can be formal, such as an organization that has rules and procedures and where members have various roles and responsibilities, or informal. A “community leader” means a trusted person within a community to which members look for guidance. Leaders may have formal titles (e.g., President) or may just be recognized informally as being influential within their communities.

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During the community forum, LGBTQIA+ community leaders will engage in semi-structured conversations with public librarians from Ohio. The conversation will follow a World Café concept for facilitating large group dialogue, which has successfully been applied in public health to research the health information needs of LGBTQ+ communities. University of South Carolina researchers will also report on research findings from interviews with 30 South Carolina LGBTQ+ community leaders about their communities’ health information practices. Detailed notes will be taken by researchers during the forum. It will not be recorded. All forum participants’ identities will be kept confidential. Food and beverages will be served, and travel stipends are available upon request.

 

If you are interested in participating, please fill out this (brief) form. Please also feel free to pass this email or attached flyer along to anyone you know who might be interested in participating. After completing the form, I will contact you via email regarding your participation. Please note that data collected is stored on a protected server at the University of South Carolina and will be deleted once we have identified our group of LGBTQIA+ community leader participants. This forum has received ethical approval from UofSC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Pro0008587).

 

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