The HOPE Centre 2025 Community Symposium

hopecentretoronto
Jun 26
2 min read

On Thursday May 15th 2025, the HOPE Centre held our 2025 Community Symposium at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network! It was a special day of reimagining the future of health, equity, research and support for sexual/gender minorities with social workers, researchers, activists, academics, and healthcare workers.

Here are some of the key ideas shared by our attendees:

The importance of engaging communities at every step of research — from conception through data collection, analysis, and reporting
- Involve community members in every step of research to ensure questions, methods, and outcomes align with their needs and priorities
- Share the research findings with the community in accessible formats (e.g., presentations, reports, videos, social media)
The gaps in research regarding eating disorders in LGBTQ+ communities, misdiagnosis (e.g., BPD and autism), reproductive health for 2STN folks, impacts of trauma, ACB and newcomer experiences, and long-term effects of hormone therapy.
Addressing systemic racism and discrimination in healthcare access/quality
Advocating for peer support-centered, culturally grounded, intuitive approaches rather than rigid, clinical-only models
- Build trust, genuine relationships, and acknowledge medical mistrust

Based on our 2025 Community Symposium, the HOPE Centre's next steps are to:

Establish working groups based on interest to continue the conversation and promote research
Create studies that focus on the strengths and challenges of the community and develop programs to improve community health
Collaborate with community organizations and stakeholders to ensure that the research is community-led and impactful
Identify potential funding sources to support research and community programs.
Summarize findings using videos, TikToks, and other engaging formats suited to shorter attention spans