Engaged Scholarship on the Family’s Role as a Proximal Health Resource for LGBTQ+ Adolescents

The mindful incorporation and centering of community members’ contributions during intervention development is a cornerstone of engaged scholarship. However, highly structured engagement protocols inhibit the ability of stakeholders from diverse communities from fully participating in research studies. In this chapter we highlight the strategies our team used to identify community experts for feedback on our emergent intervention. We do so in the context of developing a family-based sex communication program for parents of gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) adolescent cisgender males. The intervention developed includes forming engaging websites and animated videos for Parents ASSIST (Advancing Supportive and Sexuality-Inclusive Sex Talks). This chapter outlines the development of Parents ASSIST from the formation of a Parent Advisory Board, a Clinical Expert Panel, and feedback collection from expert stakeholders at local community and research events. With social determinants of health such as school-based sex education often failing to properly address LGBTQ-specific topics, we augment the lack of adequate educational materials for this youth population by focusing on parent–child communication while meaningfully partnering with members of the community.