Student Receives Fellowship to Study Massachusetts LGBTQ Youth Data.

Gray Babbs (they/them/theirs), a second-year Master of Public Health student, has been named a 2020 Rappaport Public Policy Fellow for Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. The summer fellowship places graduate students at state and local agencies for an opportunity to learn how public policy is created and implemented, and to help public officials address key issues.

For the 10-week program, Babbs is working with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) and the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth to analyze inclusivity data on sexual orientation and gender identity that DYS has collected over the past seven years. Their goal is to understand possible disparities among LGBTQ youth in the Commonwealth’s juvenile justice system.

“LGBT youth are about twice as likely as straight youth to be involved in the criminal justice system because of a couple of factors: LGBT youth are more likely to be homeless and in foster care, and they are more likely to have substance use issues than straight youth,” says Babbs, who is pursuing the sex, sexuality, and gender and epidemiology and biostatistics certificates at SPH. “Massachusetts has been a leader in collecting inclusive sexual orientation and gender identity data (SOGI), but they haven’t really dived into that data yet, so my job is to look at how they’re collecting data, and also to analyze that data among different outcomes.”

 Babbs will review the SOGI data for evidence of disparities among LGBTQ youth on issues such as harassment, assault, performance in classrooms, and representation in educational materials.

“We know that about 30 to 40 percent of all girls in the criminal justice system identify as LGBTQ, and about 85 percent of LGBTQ youth are youth of color,” says Babbs. Ensuring that these identities are represented within the juvenile justice system’s school library selections is an example of a recommendation that may arise from the data analysis, they say. “Right now, the school libraries within the juvenile justice system in Massachusetts are required to have LGBTQ representation in books—but are these LGBTQ books by and about queer girls/women of color? If not, how can we ensure LGBTQ content reflects the identities of the DYS youth population?”

Babbs will develop a report on their findings, as well as recommendations on how DYS can improve and advance its process for data collection on LGBTQ youth. Also a fellow for SPH’s Public Health Post (PHP), Babbs plans to write about their findings for the publication as well.

“DYS’s goal is that every youth leaves their care with ‘something positive,’” says Babbs. But this positive outcome is difficult to measure quantitatively because each youth’s goals vary, and youths’ ideas of positive outcomes can be different than those of their family, direct care staff, clinicians, and teachers, Babbs says. “This summer, I am conducting interviews with all of these stakeholders to understand a quantitative measure of ‘a positive outcome,’ and by doing so, I hope to help DYS identify strengths and gaps in facilitating positive outcomes for all youth.”

Now in its 20^th year, the Rappaport Public Policy Fellowship is a key component of the Rappaport Institute, a research and policy center housed at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The institute aims to improve public policy in Greater Boston by strengthening connections among local students, scholars, and civic leaders. Babbs joins a cohort of 19 other scholars, including School of Social Work students Florence Glynn, Greer Hamilton, and Noor Toraif.

—Jillian McKoy