Even under typical circumstances, queer students in the sciences face substantial obstacles to career advancement, let alone conventional success at their respective institutions. COVID-19 has made queer students’ fundamental well-being even more tenuous. To protect community members and society as a whole, universities and colleges across the country have shuttered, leaving many without stable housing, food, or day-to-day structure. One group, however, is expanding its usual purpose to ensure queer students aren’t left in the lurch during the pandemic. 

OSTEM (Out in STEM) is a national organization of STEM undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals who identify as LGBTQ+ and who share resources to support and advance professional development in the sciences. Since its inception in 2005, oSTEM has expanded from a small IBM focus group to a national organization serving both students and professionals.

Cortland Russell, oSTEM’s president and CEO, explains in an interview with Lady Science some of the structural challenges that queer people face in STEM. “A lot of it has to do with opportunity or lack thereof, and network or lack thereof,” Russell says. “[This means] LGBTQ people not getting the same research opportunities, not having the same size or depth of network to tap into, especially in crisis situations.”

These disparities feed into conventional metrics of success at school and in the job market, Russel adds. Because queer people must often support themselves due to socioeconomic marginalization or familial estrangement, Russell says LGBTQ+ people need support to move forward.

OSTEM and its analogs often host networking events and conferences to facilitate the forward momentum the organization aspires to instill in its membership. Now these queer scientists are facing a global pandemic, which is exacerbating the very disparities oSTEM exists to confront. 

Some oSTEM members are currently researching the many effects of COVID-19 on LGTBQ+ communities. Dustin Duncan, a social and spatial epidemiologist at Columbia University and member of 500 Queer Scientists, studies how neighborhood contexts influence population health. His work emphasizes intersectionality and health disparities, most particularly among black sexual minority men and transgender women of color. 

The arc of the pandemic is far from over, but Duncan says early data suggests a negative influence on mental well-being. A survey of 1,000 gay men investigated how COVID-19 has impacted mental health, lifestyle, and sexual practices. Duncan recalls the takeaway being an increase in anxiety among 46 percent of participants, which he says, “completely makes sense.” 

Nicky Tettamanti, a transgender scientist and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intervene Upstream, a peer-reviewed grad student publication on public health, says that social pressures further contribute to the precarity in queer people’s health outcomes. She also highlights the long history of queer medical discrimination, noting that stigma continues to pose a hurdle to those seeking medical care in the first place. 

Finding resources can also be more difficult for queer people with fragmented support networks. “Living at home poses its own risk [for queer people] if their family is not necessarily supportive and [if they have] strained relationship with their family,” Tettamanti explains. “It brings forth the underlying pain of social patterns, and it makes clear what those social patterns are in ways that looking at cardiovascular outcomes over 30 years [also] does—but we're seeing it really fast and really intensely as a result of it being a pandemic.”

To triage some of these disparities, oSTEM is offering interventions for queer STEM students and professionals displaced by COVID-19 tailored to their specific vulnerabilities.

Duncan’s research intersects with community health organizations at the level where interventions can happen on the ground. As such, he recommends that these groups not only develop resources for vulnerable communities but also in partnership with them. For the queer scientists served by oSTEM, a community-developed resource guide was step one. 

One of the first things visitors to oSTEM’s website will notice is information about emergency services and resources. The organization offers three main resources tailored to the needs of the queer community during the pandemic: financial support, mental health crisis response, and continuity of community. 

Russell says that the organization diverted funding for programming that otherwise would have taken place in-person to its Community Relief Emergency Fund. The fund provides financial assistance to queer scientists in urgent need due to COVID-19. OSTEM is also offering a 24/7 mental health hotline available via text, should members find themselves in a mental health crisis. 

These resources aren’t without their limitations, however. Russell explains that only a select number of oSTEM volunteers are trained in ASIST, an internationally accredited crisis intervention platform; only so many volunteers can respond to emergencies at any given time. As for the money, Russell says oSTEM plans on distributing funding as long as it’s able—and that this is ultimately contingent on community support. To date, oSTEM’s community relief emergency fund has distributed $20,000 to queer scientists in need. 

OSTEM is also reimagining its in-person community building efforts by creating online platforms for LGBTQ+ scientists. Through these online platforms, scientists can share experiences, skill sets, or just each other’s company—a vital resource during the pandemic.

In addition to monthly (now digital) business-as-usual chapter meetings, affinity groups for trans and non-binary folks, queer people of color, and LGBTQ+ women continue to breathe life into the organization. Russell adds that oSTEM is looking to promote wellness into these affinity group meetings through conversations around resource and career management during the pandemic. 

Still, scrambling to create a support infrastructure for the queer science community practically overnight has led Russell to consider what still needs to change. 

“It has revealed to us that we were not fully prepared for something like this,” Russell admits. “We were not as responsive as we should have been … we didn't fully understand the magnitude to which [COVID-19] would impact our members and us as an organization. I think we were actually slower than I would have liked us to be to respond.”

Image credit: Empty lab by Michael Pereckas, 2008 (Flickr | CC BY 2.0)