BUZZ
Lesbians and gender-confused women are invited to share their menopause stories with University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers at an upcoming “digital storytelling” event.
“Researchers affiliated with the Health Environment and the Arts (HEART) Initiative at UMass continue to seek sexual and/or gender minority people experiencing peri/menopause to participate in a digital storytelling project,” a news release states.
“‘Queering Menopause: Building Collaboration for Understanding Menopause Among Sexual and/or Gender Minority People’ invites participants to tell their stories related to being in the peri/menopausal stage of their lives,” the announcement states. This event will “[bring] together social science researchers and peri/menopausal individuals to produce a digital story about an important moment in their lives.” It will take place over three days in January.
Participants will walk away with not only $300, but also with their own “1- to 3-minute digital story related to their experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community who is in the peri/menopausal phase of life.”
Those who wish to can “share their story ideas in a story circle and final digital story in a story screening at the end of the workshop.”
“With participant consent, the researchers also plan to share the stories with various audiences, such as workshop participants, allied community-based organizations and advocacy networks and public health workers,” the university stated.
Professor Krystal Kittle from the school’s department of health promotion and policy is a co-leader on the project. She “focuses on LGBTQIA+ aging and health,” according to an Instagram post by the university’s public health school. “She is currently in the middle of a study that focuses on dementia caregivers who also identify as a sexual or gender minority (SGM) and who also have a racial-ethnic minority background.”
Kittle is joined in her research by Aline Gubrium, another school of public health professor.
With three degrees in anthropology, Gubrium studies “Sexual and reproductive health and well-being of marginalized women and youth,” “Participatory digital, visual, and narrative research methodologies,” and “Holistic and culturally-centered approaches to health promotion,” according to her curriculum vitae.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is paying her to conduct a “comprehensive investigation using participatory research methods with two diverse communities in Massachusetts.” Her goal is “to examine how structural racism, in combination with other systems of oppression, contributes to inequitable sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) and broader life outcomes for young people and marginalized parents/families,” according to her faculty bio.
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