‘I Have to Focus on Hope’ A LGBTQ and Latino Health Scholar on His Research.

Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz with some of his colleagues from elTEAMNetwork at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in Vancouver in 2022. From left to right: Souhail Malave-Rivera, Kyle Melin, Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, Ricardo Vargas-Molina, Edda I. Santiago-Rodriguez, Luis Arroyo-Andujar, and Milton Rodriguez. Photo courtesy of elTEAMNetwork.
‘I Have to Focus on Hope’
Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, chair and professor of community health sciences, discusses the evolution of his research to support the sexual health of LGBTQ+ Latinos.
After more than a decade spent engaging LGBTQ+ Latinos in sexual health research, both in Puerto Rico and the continental United States, Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, chair and professor of community health sciences, feels grateful to have earned the community’s trust.
“If we are doing true community health work, the community should be centered,” says Rodriguez-Diaz, who came to the School of Public Health in fall 2023 from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. “The work that I’ve done has always been informed by what the communities believe are the priorities.”
This mindset, he says, was the catalyst for the transformation of his newly expanded research team, elTEAMNework or The TEAM Network, over the past year.
The product of a multidisciplinary partnership between the University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences Campus, UPR Graduate School of Public Health, Ponce Health Sciences University, and BUSPH, elTEAMNetwork focuses on health equity and social justice initiatives ranging from research to activism. Rodriguez-Diaz serves as a co-principal investigator for the collaborative, which evolved from his prior work with “SexTEAM,” a more than 10-year-long initiative on behalf of universities, community-based organizations, and public and private entities to share knowledge and advance public policy related to the sexual health and the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ populations.

As the horizons of SexTEAM’s work broadened to encompass social determinants of health beyond sexual health, Rodriguez-Diaz and his team decided that it was time for a re-brand. Moving forward, elTEAMNetwork will remain committed to LGBTQ+ populations, people affected by HIV, and sexual health, while also working to reduce health inequities through research, interventions, and services. Additionally, the team will now tackle emerging challenges, such coordinating and studying responses to natural disasters, COVID-19, and mpox, as well as training public health professionals.
One of the team’s enduring priorities is to sustain the trust of the community, whose members may be feeling particularly vulnerable given the current tone of political discourse surrounding immigration from South and Central America. Gaining people’s trust is often one of the main challenges public health professionals face when working with underserved communities, says Rodriguez-Diaz. Due to historical disenfranchisement and persistent power imbalances, communities may be skeptical of academics and weary of being misunderstood or mistreated.
Rodriguez-Diaz understands. As a queer man born and raised in Puerto Rico, he self-identifies in several ways with the communities he serves; they share similar life experiences and health risks. He brings these sensibilities to his public health scholarship, while simultaneously keeping in mind the privileges afforded to him by his education and academic position. It is his relationship with the community, he says, that inspired him not only to research and teach public health, but to also act as a public health advocate and activist.
“Often, we make the assumptions that the policymakers, that the people making decisions around policies or laws, know what we know about public health,” says Rodriguez-Diaz. “And very often they do not. A part of our [team’s] role is helping them understand the public health issues that we are knowledgeable of and the work that is necessary.”
In the past, Rodriguez-Diaz and his team have shared feedback on drafts of a bill of rights for people with HIV in Puerto Rico. Rodriguez-Diaz is personally involved in several national initiatives at the intersection of LGBT health and HIV, and has served on panels organized by the Office of National AIDS Policy, including the ¡Adelante! Summit, which gathered Latino community leaders at the White House to discuss the status of the HIV epidemic among Latinos and exchange ideas on how to address sticking points in eradicating the disease. Most recently, Rodriguez-Diaz and his colleagues participated in a think tank on transgender health and the health of gender-diverse or non-binary populations.
As Latinos, queer, transgender, and non-binary people are increasingly forced to contend with stigmatizing and discriminatory laws and policies, Rodriguez-Diaz is adamant that the field of public health does not shy away from engaging with the political forces that shape their health.
“At this point, we are talking, we are creating spaces to share our perceptions of how things are going and how certain actions may make our work more challenging. But we are also talking about hope,” says Rodriguez-Diaz. “As a leader in my field and with[in] the team, I focus on hope because we are not [abandoning] the principles of public health and the principles of working with communities. The environment can turn more challenging, but we are going to continue doing what we know is the right thing and we’ll continue to focus on the needs of the community—now more than ever, solidarity and working together may be the foundation that is necessary to achieve public health.”
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