Interview With Gavin Brown From Trade Sexual Health

Alice Bennett

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Chief Executive Officer at Trade Sexual Health, Gavin Brown, speaks about the work Trade does, queer joy at pride and taking part in a Trans Healthcare campaign with Leicester Citizens.

Trade Sexual Health is a charity which offers health services and support to local LGBT+ communities within Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The Evolution Of Trade Sexual Health

Trade Sexual Health became a registered charity in 2000. However, the organisation has been around for much longer. It started more than 30 years ago as an “informal gay community response” to HIV in Leicester. Gavin Brown has been the Chief Executive Officer since 2022.

He explains: “Trade made sure that HIV prevention information got to South Asian men, who have sex with men, in the city. They might not have had a strong connection to the gay bar scene or anything. Over time, we explored thinking quite holistically and intersectionally about the barriers people might experience to being able to look after their sexual health.”

“It’s really important for people to feel they belong to something bigger”

This intersectional approach continued as the organisation evolved. Services expanded to cover mental health and wellbeing, with counselling becoming a core part of their service in 2007. Over the years, Trade became a health and wellbeing charity for the whole LGBT+ community, whilst continuing their original work around HIV.

Brown says: “It was recognising the people who were accessing our services was beginning to change. We were seeing a lot more trans and non-binary people, as well as queer women, were accessing our services a bit more.”

“Thinking about the diversity of the city. It’s interesting to think about the experience of sections of the LGBT community from different ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds”

Community And Queer Joy At Pride

The emphasis on serving the whole LGBT community applies when considering the stark difference between the city and the county. Brown explains: “Thinking about what it’s like, if you’re growing up LGBT in small rural villages. How do you find community?”

“We’ve always done it, but we’ve recently refreshed our commitment to doing community building and development as part of our health and wellbeing work. It’s really important for people to feel they belong to something bigger as a way of feeling good about themselves and therefore being able to look after their health and wellbeing.”

In recent years, areas in the county have organised their first pride events. This offers an opportunity to build a sense of belonging. The first Ashby Pride, for example, had events across 10 different venues, including cafes, bars and community centres. Brown says: “It was an interesting way of delivering it… they felt rooted in the town.”

However, Brown adds: “I think there can be a tendency during pride to go to the lowest common denominator of ‘love is love’, everything is rosy, ‘let’s celebrate’.”

“And that’s good, let’s celebrate what we’ve achieved. Despite all the attacks on the community at the moment, holding onto those moments of queer joy is important. There’s only so much that anger and rage can drive you. It’s a surefire route to activist and campaign burnout.”

“But I also think we’re in a hostile environment for trans and non-binary people. It’s really important, for the whole community, particularly young people, to offer places where they can belong and feel safe.”

Listening To The Queer Community

Listening to the LGBT+ community has been of the utmost importance. Brown says: “There’s lots to do at an individual level, but I think you need to think about the collective as well”. At a vigil for Brianna Ghey at Leicester Clocktower, it was powerful to hear trans and non-binary teens talk about their fears and experiences.

He recalls: “I kind of recognised how much that resonated with my experience of being a gay teenager in the 80s at the point where Section 28 was being debated in parliament.”

“Within certain NHS services, a lack of staff and funding gets in the way of delivering better services”

Trade’s NHS campaign with Leicester Citizens also listened to the trans and non-binary community.

“Their experiences of healthcare and the stories we heard at Leicester Pride last year (and various other engagement events), we distilled the common threads of those stories into three key asks for the campaign,” says Brown.

Leicester Citizens: Trans-Inclusive Healthcare

As well as the services it offers, advocacy is also a big part of Trade Sexual Health with projects such as their ‘Safe Streets’ campaign. It has also recently played a role in a campaign with Leicester Citizens, advocating for inclusive healthcare. Trade wants more inclusive care for trans and non-binary people, in particular.

“Often, within certain NHS services, a lack of staff and funding gets in the way of delivering better services. There are ways to more effectively use the available resources, so we’re always up for having those conversations.”

Brown continues: “Sometimes the NHS and GP surgeries attempt to implement positive change or harness technology, but sometimes don’t think through the logic of some of those changes from a patient perspective. We’ve opened up a space for having conversations about: ‘This process doesn’t work in the way you thought it was going to and it shouldn’t take that much work to make it more user friendly’.”

Trade developed ‘three key asks’ to improve inclusivity in the NHS.

The Three Asks:

1. A “tell me once” approach to changing names and gender markers
2. Trans awareness and trans inclusion across the Integrated Care Board
3. Each of the local primary networks should identify a trans health champion

What Trade Sexual Health Wants

Talking more about the “tell me once” approach, Brown recalls hearing many stories from patients being deadnamed and misgendered outside of specifically trans-related care.

“Why can’t those systems connect up? The principle should also apply if you need to have a translator or access needs. There’s a whole range of things where actually it’s a really simple bit of coding on the IT system.”

“It’s really positive to see that something so small […] is potentially going to be taken up”

Intersectionality continues to be a recurring theme.

The “tell me once” approach may also be “a fix for wider sections of the community”. For example, the barriers to accessing healthcare for people whose first language isn’t English, asylum seekers, recently arrived migrants in the city and a range of other people.

Celebrating Progress

The Integrated Care Board responded “positively” to the campaign, and Leicester Citizens is even hoping to roll it out nationally. Brown says: “It’s really positive to see that something so small that started locally in Leicestershire is going to potentially be taken up and rolled out.”

Again, he emphasises how it is important to celebrate progress despite remaining challenges. Focusing on possible changes without political authorisation is one of the reasons why the three asks were received so well. 

Brown concludes: “It doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff to be done challenging the implications of the Cass Review. There are still important conversations to be had with the government and health services. But if you stick to highly contentious issues, you miss opportunities to deliver positive change on the ground in other ways.”

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Featured image courtesy of Marek Studzinski via Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.