The mission of Soul Soil Research Institute is to conduct insightful community-based research that will benefit trans*, queer, and LGBIA populations and support the values of Soul Soil Collective Farm. We are especially focused on informing health service providers and supporting resilient and thriving lives for trans*/NB and gender-expansive people. Soul Soil Research Institute is a subsidiary of Soul Soil Collective Farm.

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Current projects

 

Gender-affirming care needs assessment

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Kris Gebhard, PhD is currently facilitating a coalition of researchers and organizations

around a mission to make financial support for gender-affirming medical interventions more widely accessible nationwide. We are inspired by the broad-reaching success within the reproductive justice movement of providing financial support to patients across the country using technology (such as Piggybank) to easefully distribute funds, and are currently conducting a needs assessment research project to better understand the need for financial and practical support on the ground.

 

In September 2023, Soul Soil Research Institute received a generous grant from Reprocare to launch the needs assessment. Kris is currently connecting with researchers who are doing national and regional studies that can help us more fully understand the healthcare needs of TGNC people in general and the disparities in access to essential gender-affirming healthcare, formulating specific research questions for mixed methods empirical studies to conduct in 2024, and fundraising to support the full budget required to complete the needs assessment.

We're on a mission to figure out how to get trans folks any financial and practical support they  need to access to gender-affirming care!

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Volunteers welcome!

We are especially in need of a volunteer with experience fundraising and connections to foundations and donors who want to support trans health and gender-affirming care. Partial pay as a contract employee is possible up front, with further pay upon receipt of funding.

 

We are also open to volunteer researchers, especially in late 2023/early 2024.

 

Contact Kris for an informational interview! kris@soulsoilresearch.org

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Community resilience among communities targeted by state-sanctioned violence

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Kris has also recently engaged in scholarship on building and maintaining community resilience among communities targeted by state-sanctioned violence — here’s a toolkit on strategies for building community resilience.  Kris is available to consult with community members on strategies for building our resilience as a cornerstone of work to generate a society free from reliance on destructive forces.

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