Expert Care
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Hello!
Welcome to the National LGBTQ Health Information Network site.
My name is Vanessa Kitzie, an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. We’re looking for LGBTQIA+ community leaders currently residing in Ohio to participate in a half-day community forum on July 18th from 10 am - 2 pm EST at the Columbus Metropolitan Library - Main Library. 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.
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.
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).
Click image below to download a printable version.
Expert Care
Eco-Friendly Practices
Convenient Services
Custom Tailoring
Who Is Leading This Project?
The project is led by Vanessa Kitzie, Ph. D., a faculty member at the University of South Carolina (USC) School of Information Science. It’s a continuation of her work focused on understanding how LGBTQIA+ people create, seek, use, and share health and healthcare information.
Over the next two years, Kitzie and her team will collaborate with LGBTQIA+ communities, LGBTQIA+ community health workers, public libraries, and health sciences libraries to identify available health resources, then assess and curate them. They anticipate concluding the project at the end of 2028.
Kitzie’s work is externally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The funding was rescinded by the current administration for eight months due to its not aligning with governmental priorities. In a way, this is a testament to how critical the topic is and how often official expert research meant to support LGBTQIA+ health outcomes is challenged. Fortunately, the American Library Association and its partners, through ongoing lawsuits, secured the restoration of all Institute of Museum and Library Services grants, including Kitzie’s, as of December 3, 2025 [If you’d like to read the project narrative originally submitted to IMLS, you can do so here.]
If you have any questions, please email LGBTQHealthGuide@sc.edu.
We are recruiting!
We want to collaborate with you if you are an LGBTQIA+ community health worker or health sciences librarian based in the US.
Please see the flier for more information and, if interested, complete our interest form.
We are looking for collaborators!
