Nearly $2 Million Initiative Widens Access to Lesbian, Bi, Trans, and Queer (LBTQ) Healthcare in Northern California

In 2022, a couple LGBTQ+ nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area approached Horizons Foundation about joining forces to apply for funding from the State of California’s new Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LBTQ) Health Equity Initiative, designed to address well-documented disparities in trans and LBQ healthcare.  
 
According to Horizons Foundation’s 2018 LGBTQ Community Needs Assessment, which surveyed over 1,400 LGBTQ people in the nine-county Bay Area, 91% of transgender, genderqueer, and non-binary respondents said that having access to LGBTQ-specific health services was important or critical, citing previous negative experiences of shaming, judgment, and getting inadequate care from providers who not well informed about their health needs. Sixty percent of transgender respondents were concerned that services would not be transgender-friendly, and 49% of transgender respondents reported not seeking mental health care out of fear that the services would not be transgender-friendly. The many additional barriers to accessing medical services that LGBTQ people reported include affordability, concern about cultural sensitivity, and not knowing how or where to access services. 
 
In 2024, Horizons Foundation, alongside six grantee partner organizations, were awarded $1.9 million under the California Department of Public Health's LBTQ Equity Initiative. These organizations share Horizons’ commitment to supporting the most underserved segments of the LGBTQ+ community, and many of them have a specific focus on the most underserved within the trans community, including trans women of color and young trans women in detention centers. Our six partner organizations are: 

• El/La Para TransLatinas (San Francisco), which serves to protect trans Latina women against violence, abuse, and illness. 
• Gender Health Center (Sacramento), which works to ensure access to culturally informed healthcare for transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) people, especially those with intersectionally marginalized identities. 
• Lyon-Martin Community Health Services (San Francisco), which provides high-quality, compassionate mental and physical healthcare to transgender and LBTQ individuals. 
• Pacific Center for Human Growth (Berkeley), which operates a sliding-scale mental health clinic for LGBTQ+ people and their families. 
• Young Women’s Freedom Center (San Francisco), which advocates for, mentors, and educates young women and trans youth, especially those who have experienced the juvenile legal and foster care systems. 
• San Francisco Community Health Center (San Francisco), which provides comprehensive medical, dental, and mental health services to underserved communities. 

These six highly qualified project partners represent a mix of small- and medium-sized organizations that offer a cohesive and complimentary network capable of addressing a wide range of health and social service needs of underserved LBTQ populations across the San Francisco Bay Area to Sacramento. The funding, under the supervision of Horizons Foundation, is placing the most vulnerable and underserved at the center of responsible, best-practice healthcare services in California. We are proud to be a part of helping to build a blueprint for widespread, community-led healthcare reform in California and beyond.  
 
As the LGBTQ+ community’s leading philanthropic institution, Horizons Foundation is proud to continue our leadership in overseeing and administering complex, multi-party contract and grantmaking arrangements while addressing the needs of the most vulnerable in our community. Through this initiative, we are taking crucial steps toward our vision of a world where all LGBTQ+ people can live freely and fully.   

For questions about the LBTQ Health Equity Initiative, reach out to us at [email protected].