LSUHealthNO Hosts 2nd LGBTQ+ Health Care Symposium

The second annual LGBTQ+ Health Care Symposium will be held the evenings of April 25-26, 2018, at LSU Health New Orleans Medical Education Building, 1901 Perdido Street, in Lecture Room A on the first floor. The two-day event is free and open to the public. Parking will be available in Student Lot 2, which is on Perdido Street between South Prieur and Bolivar streets.

The program on Wednesday, April 25, from 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. features a panel of professionals discussing Current Issues for the Physical and Mental Health Care of People Living with HIV/AIDS in the LGBT Community and answering questions from the audience. The panelists are Christine Brennan, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor of Health Policy & Systems Management at LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health and Project Director for South Central AIDS Education and Training Center at LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health; Terry Mayers, LCSW, a mental health care provider serving the New Orleans LGBT+ community; Robert Suttle, Assistant Director of SERO, an organization focused on ending the inappropriate prosecution of people living with HIV; and Bruce Hinton, PA, who works at CrescentCare and focuses on the expansion of PreExposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) services and the management and treatment of HIV infection.

On Thursday, April 26, from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m., Robert Suttle of the SERO Project will conduct a training event entitled HIV Criminalization in Louisiana. While free and open to the public, the training requires registration here.

For this year's event, the LSU Health New Orleans LGBTQ+ student organization, LGBT+Allies Organization for the Cultural Understanding in the Health Sciences (LOCUS), has partnered with the South Central AIDS Education and Training Center Program (AETC South Central) in the LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health to provide an expanded, two- day LGBTQ+ health care symposium.

“Although medical advances have made HIV a chronic disease, many people living with HIV still experience mental, social, and even legal stigmatization as a result of their status,” notes Andrew Hollenbach, PhD, LSU Health New Orleans Professor of Genetics and LOCUS faculty sponsor. “Further, adherence of HIV positive individuals to antiretroviral medications can result in their having undetectable viral status, which combined with the advent of PrEP is highly effective in preventing the further transmission of the virus. These issues and many more will be discussed in what we hope to be an informative and educational event.”