New website co-developed by UFV prof. aims to provide resources, supportive community for LGBTQ+ cancer patients
Queering Cancer, a new website launched Oct. 27, offers resources and testimonials and is intended to help build community among LGBTQ2+ individuals diagnosed with cancer.
Evan Taylor, an assistant professor at UFV’s school of social work and human services, helped to create the site along with two peers at Queen’s University and the University of Alberta. They said the team first met through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, after they all responded to a call for project proposals related to knowledge translation and LGBTQ+ health.
“We see an enormous disparity in terms of access to information [for gay and non-binary individuals],” Taylor said. “There’s a huge gap in terms of cancer-specific, or population-specific cancer information around gender and sexuality.”
However, Taylor also emphasized that the disparities in treatment for queer and trans Canadians extends beyond mere gaps in information, and that much work still needs to be done to address those inequalities.
Taylor said: “There’s disparities in terms of people’s access to screening, people’s follow-up after screening … and there’s also a huge gap in people’s satisfaction with care. We see a lot of queer and trans folks telling us that they weren’t treated respectfully in their care, or that they experienced stigma or discrimination.”
According to Taylor, the Queering Cancer site is intended to help address some of these gaps, not only by providing research and information resources for LGBTQ+ identifying Canadians with cancer, but also a space for them to come together and discuss their experiences.
“The primary goal of the site is to provide access to peer support,” said Taylor. “One of the things that we found in the research and we’ve seen over and over is that where there’s things like support groups or particular support information … we’re hearing from a lot of queer and trans folks that they are not able to access those programs, or that they don’t have people who are peers to them.”
The website is currently divided into three categories: a peer support forum, a library of resources (including research, videos, and articles), and a curated collection of stories from patients. This third section, noted Taylor, is a critical component of what they hope to accomplish with the site.
Taylor said they hope people will contribute their own stories to the site. “The whole point of this is to be able to have what I would call an ‘archive of lived experience’ so that people can go there and see that they’re not alone,” they said.
“The key message that we’re trying to get across with the project is about how cancer doesn’t discriminate, but the health-care system does,” Taylor said. “That’s why this project is so important. It’s not about adressing cancer; it’s about addressing disparities in the health-care system and how it’s organized that are impacting queer and trans folks.”
Queering Cancer logo. (Queering Cancer)
(Note: A previous version of this article included a quote from Taylor in which they said that individuals had been hired to contribute their stories to the site. They later let us know that this was incorrect, and the quote has been removed.)
