Friday May 16, 2025
IDAHOBIT (17 May)
Eastern Health LGBTQIA+ Liaison, Finn Mercury (he/they), comes from a family of nurses, with an innate drive to help others.
“I graduated as a midwife and worked at Box Hill during my grad year before qualifying as a nurse and working in various roles, mainly in sexual and reproductive health.
“Through that, I had a lot of experience with the LGBTQIA+ community, which I’m a member of myself, and I worked in research and other roles. I just really love helping people and working with priority populations. Now I’ve focused my career more on the LGBTQIA+ community,” they said.
This International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) (17 May), Mercury highlights how health inequities impact marginalised communities and how the upcoming Eastern Health LGBTQIA+ Equity Action Plan will work to address these issues.
“I’ve seen firsthand the health inequities that arise when aspects of people’s identities are either not acknowledged, or viewed as a pathology, leading to poorer treatment by the system. Anecdotally, there’s a lot of service avoidance and treatment refusal within the community, which is impossible to measure because those people never make it into the system. This has a domino effect and can damage a service’s reputation.
“The new Action Plan allows us to increase our cultural competence in that space. Through education of staff, it also sign-posts that we are a safe and inclusive place to be a consumer, visitor and staff member,” they said.
The team of Eastern Health LGBTQIA+ Liaisons are already making their mark on the community. Their role encompasses support, education and linking community organisations to consumer needs.
“It’s a varied role. We work with both consumers and staff in different ways. When consumers are referred by someone in their care team, we talk about their needs, often around gender identity or sexual orientation. I might speak directly with them, linking them to social services, community specific organisations, charities, and social groups; essentially acting as a bridge to the LGBTQIA+ community. Many of the people we support, may be in mental health units or experiencing social isolation, so community connection is a major protective factor, especially when there’s family rejection.
“We also provide secondary consultations offering general advice, referrals and resources to care teams, or talking through complex situations that can’t easily be Googled, because they involve the finer details of community. I also do a lot of staff education, delivering tailored sessions across different areas on a variety of topics,” Mercury said.
To Mercury, days like IDAHOBIT provide the opportunity to explain the value of approaching people with curiosity and openness and acknowledge our potential unconscious biases.
“By approaching others with curiosity and taking the time to check our internal biases, which we all have, whether we’re aware of them or not, we can start to unpack our assumptions and reflect on why we hold them. Ultimately, people just want to be listened to, and that’s true for anyone, especially those from minority groups. It’s important to come with curiosity, do our best with things like using the right language and be willing to ask respectful questions.
“IDAHOBIT hasn’t been around all that long and it’s really encouraging to see it increase public awareness about challenges in the LGBTQIA+ community. As a consumer of health care myself as well, having a health service that’s visibly celebrating these important days is reassuring, and it would mean that I feel more welcome there,” Mercury said.