Chicago SAGE receives $475,000 federal grant
With their receipt of a federal grant earlier this month, Chicago's Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders program has received a much-needed funding boost to its efforts to give voice to the needs of the city's growing population of LGBT seniors.
Chicago's SAGE chapter, based at the Center on Halsted,, announced earlier this month it had received a $475,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Congressman Mike Quigley requested the funding in April, 2009. And the grant will allow for the creation and expansion of a number of services.
"This century has seen a growing number of seniors dealing with not only the challenges of becoming older, but also with challenges unique to being LGBT seniors," Quigley wrote in his grant request. "These challenges include dealing with the consequences of financial inequities directed toward LGBT community as well as lingering stigmatization, particularly among providers of senior services."
According to Serena Worthington, the Center on Halsted's senior director of public programs who led SAGE at the time the organization applied for the grant, it addresses several main concerns to elder LGBT Chicagoans, a population conservatively estimated at approximately 40,000. In response to increased rates of new HIV infections among people over the age of 50, SAGE hopes to develop new prevention messages that will seniors in ways others have not. It is an issue she admitted has not typically been on the radar for seniors and health-care providers alike.
"We have not been reaching an at-risk population," Worthington told EDGE. "We need to talk forthrightly to seniors about risk and harm reduction, rather than having a more 'PC' conversation. It's very important that people know to get tested and for doctors to know to test people as well."
SAGE also plans to train area health care providers around issues of cultural competency as they raise awareness of the unique needs of LGBT elders. And they will also train LGBT elders to be their own advocates, speaking directly to care providers on the experiences they've had dealing with the health care infrastructure, often experiences marked with feelings of isolation and a lack of community connectedness.
"This grant is going to go a long way in the city, helping the senior care infrastructure prepare for this coming wave of LGBT seniors - there is a gay, aging boom coming," Worthington noted. "And it's a generation that's not going back into the closet. These are federal dollars and I don't think you can underestimate the power of this message, from both a city and national context."
Hope Barrett, director of elder services at the Howard Brown Health Center, applauded the grant, which is similar to one the LGBT-friendly service provider received two years ago when it began to expand. The HBHC now offers a number of support groups and services to address social - isolation, loneliness and developing a support network - and medical issues - access to affordable medication and culturally competent health care.
Barrett noted the efforts of the city's Task Force on LGBT Aging, active over the past decade, were largely responsible for the progress seen in building an infrastructure for the city's gay and lesbian elders. She further emphasized the budding generation of gay elders are unlikely to accept invisibility in either social or political forms as readily as their predecessors may have.
"These grants show we are making progress and people are recognizing this community as having a unique set of needs; We are visible," Barrett said. "These folks were trailblazers in their younger days and certainly have more of an advocacy edge to them."
The HHS' grant to Chicago SAGE is part of a nationwide trend of growing awareness and funding for the aging LGBT population. The original SAGE chapter, located in New York, received a $900,000, three-year grant earlier this year to allow for the creation of the nation's first LGBT elders resource center. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center was the recipient of a $380,000 grant last fall to expand their over-50 support services.