Health Behaviors and LGB Youth and Young Adults
~ By Lis Maurer
About a year ago, the first major study linking the impact of family rejection on lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youth health was released. Young people who identified as LGB and who reported high levels of family rejection had higher rates of attempted suicide, depression, drug use, and unprotected sex than their LGB peers who experienced low levels of rejection. This research, by Dr. Caitlyn Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project, about the critical role of families, is explored in detail in a previous blog post (Supporting the Families of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth).
A year later, there is still little current research on LGB health outcomes, especially those of LGB young people who self-identify as being gay (versus those having same-sex behavior but identifying as bisexual or heterosexual). A new study, Disparities in a Random Sample of Self-Identifying Gay and Non-Gay Male University Students, explores additional health risks—many of which were not examined in Dr. Ryan’s research—in a sample of college students. Due to the fact that many behaviors that impact health outcomes begin during adolescence or during the transition period to young adulthood, the study investigates the health risk behaviors of gay male college students as compared to their heterosexual peers.
The research compared health risk behaviors of gay and non-gay college students and found that young gay men had higher odds than their heterosexual peers of reporting:
• multiple sexual partners;
• cigarette smoking;
• methamphetamine use;
• gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) use;
• other illegal drug use within the past 30 days and during lifetime;
• and intimate partner violence.
The authors theorize that these disparities are likely the result of a confluence of several factors, including:
• coping strategies to address or minimize stress, social stigma, or isolation;
• conflicts in reconciling gay identity, societal expectations of men, and conventional stereotypes of masculinity;
• and current health promotion messages that may unintentionally miss, or mis-message, gay audiences.
The authors note the importance of this type of research, which can inform future outreach and prevention efforts to adolescents and to young adults. The authors also note that in this sample, respondents self-identified as gay or heterosexual; there is much still to learn not only about adolescents and young adults who self-identify as gay, but also about those who do not identify as gay but who engage in same-sex sexual behavior.
A few other recent studies have analyzed other issues of LGB adolescents and health outcomes, including links between sexual orientation and unintended teen pregnancy, and the complex issue of whether bisexual youth may be at higher risk for suicide. Such disparities in health behaviors and health outcomes can serve to heighten awareness about ways prevention efforts can be better tailored to address the unique needs of LGB youth.
The literature about lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth (and adult) health behaviors, disparities, and outcomes is still very much in its early stages. As this body of research grows, so can efforts to better support LGB youth so that they might reach their full potential. Such efforts can be used to support youth workers and human service providers in working more effectively with LGB youth and their families, and to explore new models and approaches to improve health outcomes and address risk-reduction for LGB adolescents.
Additional resources and information:
Dr. Ryan discusses her work on the first major study of LGBT youth and their families, in this new podcast from the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. Dr. Caitlin Ryan: Reducing Risk and Promoting Well-Being for LGBT Youth: The Critical Role of Family Support.
Out for Health’s information about health disparities, free online training, learning modules, videos, and additional resources for providers serving LGBT youth and adults. The initiative provides outreach, education and information to LGBT people, their health care providers and the community at-large about the importance of inclusive, welcoming and respectful care.
The Fenway Institute learning module Caring for LGBTQ Youth explores healthcare issues of particular concern for LGBTQ youth populations.
National Youth Advocacy Coalition’s National LGBTQI Young Adult Tobacco Needs Assessment, available for young adults 18-24 to participate in, and for organizations to make available to young adults they serve. This initiative will make programmatic and policy recommendations for the nation, as well as cross-regional comparisons and regional statistics. The results of this project will be available in June 2010.
Lis Maurer is the coordinator of the Center for LGBT Education, Outreach & Services at Ithaca College, and is on the Editorial Board of The Prevention Researcher.
Engaging Youth in Developing Reading & Writing Skills
~ By Jasmine Rose
In last week’s blog with Keith Hefner, we covered the mission and work of Youth Communication, an agency that works to develop teenagers’ reading and writing skills by producing stories that will engage readers. In this second part of our interview, we focus on one unique aspect of Mr. Hefner’s work. Mr. Hefner talks at about the importance of solid reading and writing skills and how they are not only essential for school success, but also for future employment. He feels that high school often becomes the final chance to bring people into the “reading culture.” Mr. Hefner takes us through Youth Communication’s approach in working with youth to write their stories, a process he finds often results in supporting the youth along their path to establish a strong, healthy identity.
Jasmine Penter: What do you find are the most important reasons for assisting youth with developing their reading and writing skills?
Keith Hefner: There are practical reasons, of course. Good reading and writing skills are essential for success in school. And in survey after survey, employers report that one of their greatest frustrations is poor reading and writing skills among employees. But beyond the purely practical reasons, these skills are good indicators of thinking and analytical skills. For any kind of job (or schooling or civic participation) that requires higher-level thinking, the ability to read and write at a moderately high level is essential.
In addition, people who read well, and read a lot, absorb a huge amount of contextual knowledge. Early reading requires some decoding skills from children, but once the “reading code” is broken, additional fluency in reading is built on practice and content knowledge. Thus, there is a cascade or compounding effect. As people read more and learn more content, the more efficient one becomes at learning. And in many cases, as one becomes a better reader it becomes more pleasurable, so you want to do more of it.
This compounding effect means that by high school or college, the knowledge and thinking gap between readers and nonreaders is enormous and increasingly difficult to close. That’s why we think it is so important to produce substantive stories that will engage reluctant readers. High school is probably the last chance to bring most people into the “reading culture.”
There is also something special for teens about reading our stories, in particular. While there is no formula to our approach, a careful reading will notice our stories often follow a pattern of introducing a difficult dilemma that the teen faced, the strategies the teen used to cope with the dilemma, the consequences of those strategies, and a reflection. It’s easiest to describe this by comparing a standard story model to our own.
The standard model is “homeless to Harvard.” The beginning of the story is an elaborate exploration of the horrors of homelessness. The middle is usually a turning point, and usually focuses on an outside intervention or savior. The end is the triumph. The appeal of the story is the contrast between the beginning and the end.
Our stories play down the beginning and the end. That’s because our readers already know about the horrors of homelessness (or abuse, etc.) They don’t need to hear more. And our readers also know that happy endings are always tempered by reality. A story with the perfect “Harvard” ending only makes them feel worse, because they unconsciously measure themselves against it.
Instead, our focus is on the middle of the story. Our writers spend a lot of time describing how they respond to challenges. The small success. The dead ends. How they picked themselves up again and again. Of course, they talk about how they got help from supportive teachers or mentors, but the emphasis is always on the teens’ actions, not the “savior.” In this way, our stories both reflect the difficult realities facing our readers, but also show the impact of drive and persistence. Our stories show writers exercising a particular kind of resilience. It’s not “bouncing back from adversity.” Rather, it’s maintaining one’s persistence in the face of ongoing adversity. We show how to do that. And by doing so we show that it is an honorable and worthy struggle, and we show every specific ways to do it. (And we avoid artificially happy endings.) By telling stories in this way we provide information to readers that can help them make “thoughtful choices.”
Of course, teaching writing is another major focus of our work. Learning to write well is another way to develop strong analytical skills. Every serious writer knows that first drafts never work. It takes hard conceptual thinking—about broad questions like audience, intent, and structure—and precise questions about things like sentence structure and word usage—to improve a first draft. Helping youth engage those questions is a very concrete way to teach analytical skills.
With teens, there is a second reason why the thinking involved in writing and reading is so important. The central developmental goal of adolescence is to establish a strong, healthy identity. While that is, of course, a social process, it is also very much an individual struggle. Parents, friends, teachers, advertisers, and others are constantly trying to mold teens’ identities in ways that satisfy their goals. Part of building an identity involves turning down that noise enough to be able to reflect on and weigh the pros and cons of different aspects of identity. It requires reflecting on yourself and your environment and deciding what will work for you. That’s very hard to do amidst the cacophony of other voices. To do it well requires hard thinking and reflection, and writing is one of the best ways to do that.
A special thank you to Keith Hefner for taking the time to provide us with a substantial amount of information about his organization and the work they do with youth. Read last week’s blog, with Mr. Hefner about working with youth to create stories for youth. For more information about Youth Communication visit www.youthcomm.org.
Working With Youth To Create Stories For Youth
~ By Jasmine Rose
Personally, I have always been intrigued by the power of sharing one’s life journey as a means of self-growth, reflection, and empowerment. When youth share their personal life stories they can send strong messages to their peers, parents/guardians, communities and society as a whole, while also showing the unique gifts, talents, and perspectives youth provide.
I was very excited to get a chance to ask Keith Hefner about his agency, Youth Communication. The Prevention Researcher has had a long-standing relationship with Youth Communication and decided to share this agency’s unique mission with our readers: to help teenagers develop their reading and writing skills so they can acquire the information they need to make thoughtful choices about their lives. This blog is the first of two. Next week we’ll get a chance to read what Mr. Hefner says about engaging youth in developing their reading and writing skills.
Jasmine Penter: How do youth first become connected to Youth Communication?
Keith Hefner: Our goal is to provide information to “at risk” or disconnected youth, to encourage them to do more reading, and to provide them with accurate and helpful reflections of their lives and concerns. To do that requires having writers who are struggling with the same issues as the readers. And that means we have to make special efforts to recruit those kinds of young people, since many of them would not naturally gravitate to a writing program. We do that in several ways.
First, of course, we promote the program as a way to have a voice, and that brings people in the door. By the time they realize how hard the writing is, they are already committed.
Second, we cultivate relationships with referral agencies and schools that serve some of the toughest kids—alternative and “second chance” high schools, foster care agencies, employment programs for marginalized youth, etc.
Finally, many teens who come into the program report that they read an article in the magazine and that it helped them, and they think they have a story to tell that will help someone else. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the work—the fact that so many teens join the program out of altruistic reasons. (And it is wonderful to reach teens when they have that impulse and give them a concrete way to express it. I am convinced that one reason so many of our alumni go into teaching, social work, activism, and other “helping” professions is that the experience of writing a story that generates a grateful response from readers is very rewarding.)
Jasmine Penter: What are ways your staff engages youth when building rapport with them?
Keith Hefner: The main way we build rapport is through close listening and a kind of humility—and really striving to hear what is most important to them. We liken this to a kind of code breaking. Teens don’t just spill their guts about what is important to them. Rather, they drop hints to see if the editors pick up on them. When they see that the editors are noticing the right things and asking appropriate, nonjudgmental follow-up questions, trust grows.
Building trust is also important because every story we publish goes through 5 or 10 or sometimes 15 or more drafts. Young people will not stick with the process unless they trust the editor who is guiding them. In addition, many teens write about powerful emotional issues—such as the death of a parent, recovering from abuse, discovering their sexuality, etc. The teens won’t open up to the editor unless they trust that the editor will be sensitive to their feelings and ideas, and can help them make sense of those experiences through writing.
However, the main goal is to create a story with the power to move a reader. Teens bring their ideas to the process. The editors have expertise in how to convey ideas. The rapport that develops between the teen and the editor is not based on “pleasing the teacher,” as happens so often in school. Rather, it is based on the understanding that the teen and the editor are working toward the same goal—to create a story with the power to inform and move a reader. It is at the point when the teen is neither trying to please the editor nor engaging in an ego battle over the editing, but instead is working with the editor to learn the skills she needs to convey her ideas that rapport truly flourishes.
Jasmine Penter: While many of your programs are focused around youth, we see you also have parents/guardians involved in the Rise magazine and with some of the smaller projects. Can you further describe some of the work you do with parents/guardians that has made an impact?
Keith Hefner: Interestingly, we began our work with parents involved in the child welfare system over the objections of many of the teen writers. But once we started publishing stories by parents, the teens were fascinated by them. Most teens in foster care want some kind of relationship with the birth family, but at the same time they are very angry with them. For many of the teens, it was a revelation to see that parents who had done horrible things were not necessarily evil. In fact, many of them had been abused themselves as children and never learned how to parent, or even to respect themselves.
Our parent’s column evolved into Rise, which publishes a magazine, a website, and curricula by and for parents who are involved in the child welfare system. Rise has published three curricula based on parents’ stories, on relations between birth parents and foster parents, issues related to reunification, and parenting skills. They are already being used by child welfare agencies in prevention programs, parenting classes, and the like. [Note: Because Rise works primarily with adults we recently spun it off to become a separate organization, http://www.risemagazine.org/.]
Don’t forget to check back next week for part two on engaging youth in developing reading and writing skills.
About Keith Hefner: Keith Hefner founded Youth Communication in 1980. Prior to that, he published a magazine and a series of books on youth issues. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989, and he was a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of New York City at Columbia University during the 1986-87 academic year. In 1997 he received the Luther P. Jackson Award for Educational Excellence from the New York Association of Black Journalists. For more information about Youth Communication visit www.youthcomm.org.
