The Texas PRIDE Health Collaborative includes more than 40 researchers and 100 community partners. We host an array of seminars, workshops, and community forums meant to build capacity for LGBTQ+ health research through community collaboration. Our Mission is to ensure that LGBTQ+ health research across the state is driven by LGBTQ+ Texans through their collaboration as members of The Texas PRIDE in Health Collaborative, and that all of our collaborative research has a direct impact on the health and wellbeing of our communities. Our work is driven by a statewide planning council and advisory committee that includes individuals from across Texas who are community members, representatives of health and advocacy organizations, policymakers, healthcare providers, researchers and many more.

Our Goals and Objectives

The overall goal of The Collaborative is to improve the health of LGBTQ+ Texans by focusing on patient-centered health outcomes. We achieve this by understanding the needs and wants of diverse partners related to our research mission and increasing capacity to engage in patient-centered outcomes and comparative effectiveness research focused on LGBTQ Health.

Opportunities to Get Involved

For more information about events and opportunities, contact PRIDE Health Manager Paul Fliedner (pfliedner@utexas.edu) or PRIDE Health Collaborative Research Program Coordinator, Sarah Schwarz (sarahschwarz@utmail.utexas.edu). Please contact us to sign-up for the newsletter if you would like to attend the seminars and workshops below.

Health Priorities & Seminar Topics

With our statewide planning council we identified health priorities using data from community listening sessions we hosted across Texas. Our team has organized our seminar series to cover one of these topics every month.

Below are the health priorities we will focus on each month. Soon we will add more information about speakers, specific topics, and learning objectives.

There will be three seminars each month, a working group meeting for researchers, and community forum for partners .

Seminars, Workgroups & Community Forums

Check out out monthly programming and past event recordings here: Events

This is a monthly seminar focused on various LGBTQ+ health topics presented by researchers, community organizations, and other partners, with new speakers every month. Continuing Medical Education Credits are available.

First Wednesday Monthly (virtual)
12:00 - 1:00 pm CST / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MST

Audience: This seminar will consist of research presentations focused on LGBTQ+ health from nationally recognized experts. Recommend for individuals interested in research and clinical practice.

This is a monthly seminar and includes presentations, panel discussions, and interactive sessions delivered by researchers and community partners. Many of the sessions will be delivered by current and past PCORI-funded engagement projects like our own.

Second Wednesday Monthly (virtual)
12:00 - 1:00 pm CST / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MST

Audience: This series is aimed at exposing community members, researchers and other partners to community engaged research projects. Recommend for individuals interested in learning about community engaged research and methods.

This monthly seminar offers two tracks to build capacity for comparative effectiveness and patient-centered outcomes research. One track is for researchers and the other is for community partners. Attendees will learn about how to develop patient-centered research projects that will have a direct impact on the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ Texans.

Third Wednesday Monthly (virtual)
12:00 - 1:00 pm CST / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MST

Audience: This series will support community partners and researchers in understanding their roles on multidisciplinary research teams, how to collaboratively develop research questions, how to develop patient-centered research proposals, and expose attendees to various methods and challenges related community engaged research, comparative effectiveness research, and patient-centered outcomes research. Recommended for everyone!

This monthly community forum offers an opportunity for community partners and researchers to engage in facilitated conversations to: 1. identify and prioritize health issues, 2. discuss challenges around these health priorities, and 3. co-develop solutions to address these challenges.

Through this process we will generate research questions, form multi-partner teams of community members and researchers, and begin the process of developing research projects that will have a real-world impact on LGBTQ+ Texans.

Fourth Wednesday Monthly (virtual)
12:00 - 1:00 pm CST / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MST

Audience: This is an opportunity to engage in discussions about what specific issues should be the focus of future research projects from the perspectives of community partners. This community forum is the channel through which the work of The Collaborative is infused with community partner voices. We want to hear from you!

This monthly working group provides opportunities for researchers to receive feedback on proposals, study ideas, and seek collaboration with others. This seminar is for all levels from senior scientist to graduate students, and offers two 60-minute slots for reviews each month.

Fourth Thursday Monthly (virtual)
12:00 - 2:00 pm CST / 11:00 am - 1:00 pm MST

Audience: Focused on researchers, but community members and other partners are welcome.

For more information contact our Program Manager Sarah Schawarz, MPH: sarahschwarz@utexas.edu

JOIN OUR TEAM. GUIDE OUR WORK.

The Statewide Planning Council meets monthly to plan the activities of the PRIDE Health Collaborative, seeking to improve health and healthcare access for LGBTQ+ Texans and provide opportunities for LGBTQ+ Texans to make decisions about the focus of LGBTQ+ health research.

Fourth Wednesdays Monthly (virtual)
6:00 - 7:00 pm CST / 5:00 - 6:00 pm MST
Contact Sarah Schwarz (sarahschwarz@utmail.utexas.edu)for Zoom invitation

Audience: Regional Leadership Teams, PHC Researchers, Network, PHC collaborators, PHC advisors & staff, and members of the public by invitation.

Read our Bylaws here

For more information about the statewide planning council, contact PRIDE Health Collaborative Manager Paul Fliedner (pfliedner@utexas.edu) or PRIDE Health Collaborative Program Coordinator, Sarah Schwarz (sarahschwarz@utmail.utexas.edu). Please contact us to sign-up for the newsletter if you would like to attend the seminars, workshops, and community forums below.

The "BE HEARD" Model of Engagement

The PRIDE Health Lab will be working with a statewide planning council to fully develop The Texas PRIDE Health Collaborative Model "BE HEARD." Our approach is to co-design each of the elements of the model with patient, researchers and other stakeholder partners to ensure it meets the needs of everyone. The BE HEARD model provides a pathway for building capacity for teams of stakeholders and researchers to develop research projects that are infused with the voices of people with lived experience. This means that LGBTQ+ Texas will collaborative with researchers to determine what health topics should be the focus, how the research should be conducted, and what should be done with data in order to improve health and healthcare for LGBTQ+ people living here.

Our Story

From Dr. Phillip Schnarrs, Director of the Texas PRIDE in Health Collaborative:

The Texas People-centered Research, Intervention Design, and Evaluation (PRIDE) in Health Collaborative began as an idea in 2019 when Dr. Aliza Norwood and a team of community partners received funding to launch the UT PRIDE Health Pop-Up Institute. This initiative pulled together researchers and community partners from across the state to learn and connect. It also provided opportunities for Dr. Oralia Loza and I to engage in discussions about a community-led process to assess needs and experiences of LGBTQ+ Texans in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Loza and I connected with John Oeffinger at Texas Health Institute through their project TransFORWARD funded by The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and Ron Guillard at Texas Pride Impact Funds, and we began having conversations with researchers and community partners in each public health region across Texas. Our COVID-19 & You Study developed out of these conversations and allowed us to gather real-time data that supported community organizations in applying for funding to support communities across the state during the pandemic. In addition, our data were used as a fundraising tool to support the Queer Texas Crisis Fund – a collaboration between Equality Texas and Texas Pride Impact Funds.

The momentum of the COVID-19 & You project led to discussions about developing a statewide network of LGBTQ+ health researchers. In October 2021, we launched our first LGBTQ+ Health Seminar Series delivered by Dr. Stephen Russell (The University of Texas at Austin) and the first PRIDE in Health Research Working Group.

In Fall of 2022, we received funding from PCORI to build capacity for LGBTQ+ health research across Texas. This funding will support the development and implementation of additional seminars and meetings to increase knowledge about community engaged and comparative effectiveness research. It will also allow us to provide opportunities for researchers and stakeholders to connect, co-develop a research agenda, and form researcher-stakeholder co-led teams to pursue funding in order to support this co-created research agenda.

Collaborative Research Partners

The Texas PRIDE Health Collaborative includes research partner members from across the eight Public Health Regions in Texas.

To join The Collaborative please contact PRIDE Health Lab Manager Paul Fliedner (pfliedner@utexas.edu) or Sarah Schwarz (sarahschwarz@utmail.utexas.edu).