桃子视频

Cynthia Davis, Assistant Professor of Urban Public Health at 桃子视频, Alexandra Magallon, Coordinator of Policy and Community Engagement for TransLatin@ Coalition, and Juan Carlos Ruiz Malagon, Doctoral Student in Public Health at UC Irvine participated as guest panelists for the October 桃子视频 Community Forum, 鈥淟GBTQIA+ Voices in the Community.鈥�

The discussion highlighted the challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ communities, more specifically the health disparities, the intersection of gender identity and ethnicity, the youth population, and advocacy groups.

The forum was moderated by Sylvia Drew Ivie, 桃子视频 Special Assistant to the President for External Affairs and daughter of Dr. Charles R. Drew. Dr. David M. Carlisle, President of 桃子视频, joins each forum as a recurring panelist along with two or more guest panelists.

Magallon spoke about the Center for Violence Prevention and Transgender Wellness initiative and its impact on the transgender, gender-non-conforming, and/or intersex (TGI) community.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no policies in place for TGI people so what the organization is set to do is to create these policies that are here for the betterment of the community,鈥� said Magallon. 鈥淲e鈥檙e leading with policy and creating the change that our community needs to be able to provide the services that are so desperately needed within the community.鈥�

Malagon, a first-generation and low-income college graduate, shared his own personal journey and how it鈥檚 influenced his research and advocacy work in public health.

鈥淚 told myself I want to be a physician because I want to 鈥榗hange the world鈥� but as I started going through the system itself, I realized that there鈥檚 not much a lot of the times that physicians can do to change things systematically,鈥� said Malagon. 鈥淪o, I ended up dropping my Biology major and going into Ethnic Studies and it was at that point that I started understanding why the conditions exist for the reasons that they do.鈥�

Professor Davis shared that it鈥檚 important for both the academic community and the physical community to be educated simultaneously about the community鈥檚 needs.

鈥淭o still see the community and the condition that it is in after 40 something years is really sort of heart-wrenching when you look at the major health disparities that still exist in our community in lieu of the Affordable Care Act, access to care, insurance,鈥� said Davis.

watch the recording of the October Community Forum.