Publications

Health disparities affecting Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other sexual and gender minority populations remain profound, and the political climate is growing more volatile. This article sets out five priority issues and the policy responses each demands: poverty in 2S/LGBTQ+ communities; Two-Spirit mental health; health equity for migrant and racialized LGBTQ+ people; the difficulty of enforcing conversion therapy bans; and the shifting context of gender-affirming care. The authors argue that multi-level policy action, including in health-adjacent areas such as housing and immigration, is essential, and they challenge health policy actors across Canada to recognize structural barriers and act urgently.

Coping skills shape whether concussion symptoms drag on, which motivated this open-label mixed-methods pilot of a mindfulness-based smartphone app for young people. Ten participants aged 12 to 18 took part, recruited either within 48 hours of a concussion in an emergency department or at least a month afterwards from a tertiary care clinic, and used the four-week program 10 to 15 minutes daily. Ratings for credibility, usability, satisfaction, and working alliance with the digital mindfulness guides were favourable. Interviews surfaced positive and negative attributes, suggested modifications, and technical issues. A randomized controlled trial will now test effectiveness.

Dating apps have reshaped how men seeking men understand themselves as sexual beings, according to an analysis grounded in 79 qualitative interviews. Researchers set participants' accounts alongside theories describing intimate life as increasingly detraditionalized and precarious, but also more democratic and inventive. Participants describe far more than hook-up culture: superficiality, unmet expectations, and sometimes bruising encounters with hierarchies of age, race, body type, gender expression, and serostatus. Alongside these frustrations sits a strong pull toward sociability, building social networks, and finding language for connection beyond the terms of family and friendship. Comparing generations reveals how these virtual sexual fields have shifted sexual subjectivities.

Shelters and congregate living sites faced acute COVID-19 risk, and in March 2020 Women's College Hospital formed a Community Response Team offering mobile testing and infection prevention across Toronto, later co-designing vaccine clinics with 14 shelters. This study evaluates that hospital-community partnership using constructivist grounded theory, with semi-structured interviews with administrators from 10 shelters chosen through maximum variation sampling. Analysis produced five categories and a core category asserting that healthcare access is a human right and communities must be understood. Hospitals were seen as credible during confusion, though shelters prioritize housing over health resourcing, partnerships, accountability, and governance.

Research linking gender diversity and autism has grown quickly, and this scoping review takes stock of how that work is done. Five databases were searched for peer-reviewed studies published between 2018 and 2023, yielding 1,432 records after deduplication and 84 included studies with original qualitative or quantitative findings on a psychosocial connection between autism and gender. Estimating autism prevalence among gender-diverse people was the most common focus. Overall rigor was acceptable, but recurring weaknesses included inconsistent definitions of concepts such as gender dysphoria, weak sampling and participant description, and unvalidated measures. The field appears to be shifting away from pathologising framings toward community collaboration.