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Home / Resources / STI Updates (Blog) / Events and announcements / Upcoming conference: Gay Men’s Health Summit

Upcoming conference: Gay Men’s Health Summit

The Gay Men’s Health Summit is an annual 2-day conference organized by the Community-Based Research Centre for Gay Men’s Health, in collaboration with the BCCDC and the Health Initiative for Men.

When: November 5th and 6th, 2015
Where: Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC

The theme of this year’s Summit is “Undoing Stigma”.

The worst thing about stigma is its effectiveness. 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.

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).

To register for the Summit, click here.

For more information and history on the Summit, click here.