Press Conference today on new funding for Transgender Services
What: Press Conference Announcing New State Funding of a Transgender Services
When: Tuesday, January 29, 1PM
Where: Front Steps of City Hall
Who: State Senator Carole Migden, Local LGBT Elected officials, Transgender leaders, Pride At Work
Hi folks,
Please join us for a brief press conference announcing a significant victory for the transgender community on the employment front. This is a campaign that Pride at Work has been involved in for the last two years and is a major step forward in changing the economic future for the trans community.
History:
Last year, UCSF’s Center for AIDS Prevention without explanation relinquished close to $1 million in transgender-specific funding. The two programs that were affected by this decision included the TRANS program — which provided direct mental health and supportive services, as well as a drop-in center–to extremely marginalized members of the Bay Area transgender communities, and The Transitions Project—which helps healthcare providers around the nation develop culturally competent HIV prevention interventions for transgender people, primarily young women of color. The relinquishment of this funding not only deprived already-marginalized transgender populations in the Bay Area of important services, but left the transgender employees of these programs facing possible layoffs or inappropriate reassignments.
Last spring, Pride at Work came out in support of the workers and condemned UCSF for relinquishing the funding. We called upon UCSF to publicly explain the seemingly inexplicable abandonment of its commitments to the Bay Area’s transgender communities; and urged UCSF to identify funding and develop programs to replace the TRANS program and The Transitions Project. We also urged UCSF to adequately compensate and appropriately engage the skills of the transgender employees from the TRANS program and The Transitions Project
After hearing of UCSF’s plan to return federal grant money and close its programs, Supervisor Bevan Dufty requested that the City Controller Ed Harrington’s office investigate. On June 15, the controller’s office released a report that recommended that the SF Health Department take over the TRANS Project.
Shortly after the backlash in the community, UCSF partially backed down and said that the Transitions Project would remain at UCSF under the supervision of the Center for AIDS Prevention Services for the remaining two years until its grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention ended.
On the state level, State Senator Carole Migden met with Transgender leaders and offered to secure funding from the State to keep the program alive. Tomorrow she will announce at a press conference that she was successful in her efforts to secure those monies. The program will be hosted at Jewish Vocational Services This new funding will help us build upon past work that we have been involved in as well. In 2006, we worked with the Transgender Law Center to secure City funding for employment services for the transgender community and employer training and support services. Those efforts were successful and Jewish Vocational Services is working collaboratively with the LGBT center and the Transgender Law Center to run the Transgender Economic Employment Initiative.
This work all began two years ago when the Transgender Law Center and Pride at Work met with the SF Bay Guardian about transgender unemployment. The Bay Guardian and the Transgender Law Center decided to do a survey of employment in the transgender community. The results were somewhat shocking: 75 percent of transgender people in the Bay Area don’t have full-time employment. Equally shocking: 58 percent make less than $15,333 a year. Unemployment, underemployment, and poverty plague the trans community.
http://www.sfbg.com/40/24/cover_numbers.html
http://www.sfbg.com/40/24/cover_trans.html
http://www.sfbg.com/40/24/x_editors_notes.html
More Background: Here is an op ed from the Bay Area Reporter condemning UCSF for their conduct towards the transgender community.
http://www.ebar.com/openforum/opforum.php?sec=guest_op&id=101
UCSF’s stunning move
Guest Editorial Published 05/17/2007 in the Bay Area Reporter
by Robert Haaland
Last weeks revelation that UCSF’s Center for AIDS Prevention secretly relinquished close to $1 million in transgender-specific funding shocked and stunned community activists, who have since called for the university to be transparent about its decision, publicly accountable for how its trans-specific funds have been used in the past, and responsible for ensuring that the gaps left by the sudden and permanent loss of money for national and local programs are filled.
Two separate programs are affected by CAPS’ decision to sever its funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: The TRANS program (SAMHSA), which provides direct mental health and supportive services, as well as a drop-in center to extremely marginalized members of the Bay Area transgender communities; and the Transitions Project, which helps healthcare providers around the nation develop culturally competent HIV prevention interventions for transgender people, primarily young women of color.
In the world of public health, it is not uncommon for new programs to encounter difficulties, for grants to be unavailable, and for previous funding to be lost. Publicly funded programs that encounter such difficulties generally are expected, as public institutions, to disclose their program expenditures and the reasons for their closures. Such bumps in the road are an expected part of innovative community programming. However, for a program to deliberately turn away available funds – as UCSF’s CAPS has done – without any transparency or public accountability – is a very big deal.
Fortunately, officials like state Senator Carole Migden have been working with transgender community activists to try to save CAPS’ drop-in center. But after the most recent revelation last week, more must be done: our community members and elected officials must demand an investigation and public disclosure about why CAPS is relinquishing nearly $1 million dollars in funding. Had UCSF tried to find another principal investigator or agency to house these grants, the money could have been saved for the transgender community. Now, that money is permanently gone. Nearly $1 million in HIV prevention funding … for the most marginalized of trans communities … gone.
Ironically, CAPS’ actions have led to a direct assault on the mission of its programs: transgender empowerment. We know that marginalized transgender populations in the Bay Area and around the country are now left without programming and services, and that lawmakers and other leaders likely will attempt to address the needs of these former clients, even if UCSF fails to step up. But it is also important to address CAPS’ TRANS program and Transitions Project from a labor perspective: specifically, the numerous transgender employees of CAPS who have been faced with possible layoffs or inappropriate reassignments, and the documented complaints of underpayment and salary inequities from transgender employees over the past year, among other complaints that CAPS has yet to resolve.
Meetings with labor and political groups have revealed, for instance, a variety of complaints from CAPS’ transgender employees:
- Reports that some nontransgender staff members were paid significantly more – and classified significantly higher – than transgender employees who did the same work. Transgender staff requested a reclassification and/or a pay raise to counter this obvious inequity; nearly nine months after applying for this reclassification/raise, they have yet to receive either.
- Reports that UCSF Department of Medicine’s human resources department, anticipating program layoffs, sent staff on numerous interviews for jobs that have very little to do with any work done on the TG projects. Staff was reportedly told if they did not accept one of these positions they would be “declining the layoff process” and would be asked to resign from UCSF.
- Complaints that HR did not adequately explain or translate the very complicated layoff process to the staff whose first language is Spanish. Staff whose second language is English reportedly have endured much stress and anxiety around this process.
- Reports of chronic understaffing, lack of supervision and management of staff, which made working conditions very difficult, kept morale very low and also jeopardizes the safety of staff and clients.
To its credit, there are reports that CAPS recently has made an effort to find many of its transgender employees new jobs, allowing them to avoid unemployment.
This week, the SF Labor Council signed onto an open letter to UCSF expressing outrage that they relinquished nearly $1 million in funding for transgender services, demanding that funding for the gaps left in services be found, and insisting that UCSF adequately compensate and appropriately engage the skills of these transgender employees. Unemployment and underemployment are widespread problems in the transgender community, and a huge factor in the high rates of HIV among trans folks. It is not enough to simply offer jobs to transgender people. Qualified employees, regardless of the gender identity, should have equal opportunities to advance in their careers and to put their training and experience to good use.
Robert Haaland serves as a commissioner on the Board of Appeals and is co-chair of Pride at Work, a LGBT labor organization.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
UCSF’s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies did not just relinquish the money. First off, they worked with the City of San Francisco to insure that Transgender Resources and Neighborhood Space continued. And efforts were ongoing to maintain the TRANSITIONS project, and did not result from a “backlash.” All of the difficulties involved in perserving these projects were NOT the fault of UCSF. And all of the affected employers of the TRANS Project are still with UCSF in positions that are equal or better than the ones they previously held.
There were legitimate reasons, having to do with privacy issues, that a lot of information was not forthcoming. There was no conspiracy. This article is full of half-truths, and even outright decetpion. This sort of silliness brings shame on those who identify as transgender.
The bottom line is, UCSF did not “deliberately turn away available funds.”
I should add, my comments are my own. I do not speak for UCSF or the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. I am just an interested party, who has some knowledge of the matter, and who is not happy with a fine institution being slandered for political gain.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
1) Well, like always, Pride at Work listened to the voices of workers from said fine institution, not management. Workers came forward and we responded.
2) Said fine institutiuon pays its workers so low that some of their workers are on public assistance. Meanwhile said fine institution gave their management huge bonuses.
3)Is that the same fine institution that refered to gay men as not part of the general population when discussing research on the multi-drug-resistant staph infection?
http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2008/01/three-gay-editors-question-sensational.html
Michael Petrelis did a pretty strong critique that most in the lgbt community agree with.
Petrelis wrote:
UCSF’s headline was pure red meat for hungry reporters: “Sexually active gay men vulnerable to new, highly infectious bacteria.”
The UCSF release goes out of its way four times to stereotype the sex-crazed homosexual as an “other” who is separate from the larger community:
The scientists are concerned that it could also soon gain ground in the general population. […]
“But because the bacteria can be spread by more casual contact, we are also very concerned about a potential spread of this strain into the general population.” […]
In a second part of the study based on patient medical charts, the scientists found that sexually active gay men in San Francisco are about 13 times more likely to be infected than the general population. […]
“The potential widespread dissemination of multi-resistant form of USA300 into the general population is alarming,” he adds. […]
And finally, an associate editor at Gay City News, Duncan Osborne, has sent around his letter to the New York Times, complaining about its coverage of the staph crisis created by UCSF:
Dear New York Times Public Editor:
Your January 15 story, “New Bacteria Strain Is Striking Gay Men,” was a real low point.
Your reporter, Lawrence K. Altman, wrote “the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse.” The authors of the study did not reach that conclusion. At the very start of the online study, they wrote that “sexual risk behavior was not assessed.” Later, they wrote that MRSA “might be sexually transmitted in this population.”
The authors wrote “Specific sexual behaviors were not assessed or documented in clinic charts; we therefore cannot comment on the association between multidrug-resistant USA300 infection and specific male–male sexual practices.”
The authors also wrote “It is not clear whether the behavior potentiating these infections among men who have sex with men is anal sex (that is, dissemination of rectal carriage of community-associated MRSA), skin-abrading sexual practices, or increased frequency of intimate skin-to-skin contact.”
I question if Altman actually read this study. I do not see how a person can reach the conclusion that Altman reported when the study unambiguously did not support that conclusion.
Altman wrote “The authors warned that unless microbiology laboratories were able to identify the strain and doctors prescribed the proper antibiotic therapy, the infection could soon spread among other groups and become a wider threat.”
In fact, the authors reported that “Infections caused by community-associated, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have become a major public health threat. A single clone of community-associated MRSA, USA300, was not seen before 2000 but is now widely disseminated in 38 U.S. states, Canada, and 9 European Union
countries.”
The first US outbreaks of this strain were reported in school children, athletes and prisoners. It was only in late 2002 that the first outbreak among gay men, this one in Los Angeles, was reported. Far from being Altman’s modern day Typhoid Mary, gay men are merely the latest population to contend with MRSA.
Contrary to Altman’s assertion, it is common knowledge, certainly among public health experts and journalists who follow public health, that MRSA is widely dispersed in the US. As recently as February of 2007 the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told my newspaper, Gay City News, that this was so.
“USA 300 is the pulse-field type that has become predominant in community associated outbreaks in the United States,” said Dr. Rachel J. Gorwitz, a medical epidemiologist in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at CDC. “This one pulse-field type appears to have spread across the country.”
“Skin infections lead to an estimated 12 million doctor visits every year and the majority are due to MRSA, with USA 300 being the predominant type, Gorwitz said.” The full story is available here.
Unfortunately, this sort of gays-as-a-public-health-threat rhetoric is typical of reporters of Altman’s generation. This notion that gay men are a reservoir of dangerous bacteria and viruses was implicit in Altman’s reporting on the so called “super HIV” in 2005. I should note that that reporting turned out to be completely wrong and the Times has never bothered to correct those earlier, erroneous stories.
Altman wrote “The new strain seems to have ‘spread rapidly’ in gay populations in San Francisco and Boston, the researchers wrote, and ‘has the potential for rapid, nationwide dissemination.’”
Of course, this has already happened. My paper reported this in 2004. You may read that story here.
In fairness to Altman on this last point, he was merely reporting what the study authors wrote, but this, of course, illustrates the problem with all of Altman’s reporting. He is an adequate translator of scientific research, though this latest story suggests he is no longer capable of that, but he has never shown the skepticism and reporting skills that are the hallmark of good journalism. Indeed, I do not believe that he possesses these.
This latest error-filled story suggests that Altman cannot even be described as a good stenographer.
As a gay man and a journalist, I am offended by Altman’s work and by his continued presence in the pages of the New York Times.
Duncan Osborne
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
1. UCSF was following the rules of its union contract that those workers are covered by. Other workers, who are not trans have had the same problem.
2. I have no idea what UCSF’s pay rates are, so I cannot comment.
3. Would that be the Michael Petrelis who also claims that AIDS is not caused by HIV?