Registration Open—Gay Men’s Health Summit

summitGay Men’s Health Summit 2015: Undoing Stigma
November 5th and 6th, 2015

Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
Register online

Featured Speakers

This year’s Summit features Dr. Mark Hatzenbuehler of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Dr. Evan Adams, Chief Medical Officer of the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA).

Dr. Mark Hatzenbuehler will delivery this year’s keynote address, presenting his groundbreaking research on structural stigma and the health of sexual minorities. Dr. Hatzenbuehler’s research focuses broadly on the causes of sexual orientation health disparities, the health consequences of exposure to structural forms of stigma, and the identification of biopsychosocial mechanisms linking stigma to adverse health outcomes.

Dr. Evan Adams, a member of the Tla’amin (Sliammon) First Nation, will discuss the impacts of stigma on Indigenous health. As FNHA’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Adams is transforming First Nations health and wellness, and improving access by creating and shaping a unique health care model that is the first of its kind in Canada. Previously, Dr. Adams served as Deputy Provincial Health Officer responsible for providing independent direction on First Nations and Aboriginal health issues to the Ministry of Health.

Summit Theme

The worst thing about stigma is its effectiveness – a potent social power that keeps people out, down, in-line or just – away. Dominant people achieve social status and desired ends by invoking stigmas that subordinate others to their purposes. Institutional systems enforce and reproduce stigma through discrete allocations of privilege and resources to the preferred. Stigma determines the inferiority of unwanted ethnicities, sexual orientations and disease statuses – invoked through labeling, stereotyping, discrimination, exclusion and segregation. And, like other social determinants of health, the excess stress that stigma produces ultimately correlates with a long list of negative health outcomes.

Gay and bisexual men are deeply affected by overlapping stigmas: sexuality and HIV and a range of others like gender nonconformity, race, and disability. Fortunately, our communities have been a resolute source of resistance against these challenges. But we still have a lot to learn about stigma: its vocabulary, its impact on gay and bisexual men’s health, our resilience in spite of it, and the potential we have for intervention. At this year’s Summit we will focus on stigma’s impact on gay men’s health and the theory and practice of undoing stigma.

Join us for another stimulating event with a lineup of guests whose interest is gay men and stigma from multiple perspectives.