Alaska’s Department of Health is specifically recruiting nonbinary and LGBTQ-identifying youth, ages 14-21, to be paid advisors who help shape how the state prioritizes and develops health interventions and public policy affecting young people.
A March 26 email from Alaska’s Adolescent Health Project Coordinator Jenny Baker asks teens who personally identify as LGBTQ to apply for a spot on the Youth Alliance for a Healthier Alaska virtual advisory team.
Baker said the state is looking for youth with “lived-experience,” which she defines as “residing in rural or off the road system in Alaska, a young parent or caregiver, experience with a disability, identify as LGBT+ or non-binary, in foster care, experienced homelessness, or other ways of being.”
She makes no mention of wanting to hear from youth who have certain medical conditions, educational expertise or cultural knowledge.
To sweeten the deal, the state is offering to pay all youth advisors up to $16/hour for their insights.
Baker has a history of using her state job to promote LGBTQ priorities. She has been vocal about pushing the state to ask teens about their gender identity, sexual orientation and LGBTQ sexual practices through the biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey – a questionnaire which is administered during February and March at schools across the state.
In 2022, she spoke during a YRBS planning meeting in which she lamented the fact that the state was only able to ask youth about “sexual intercourse” rather than alternative sex acts that some LGBTQ people are known to engage in.
“The challenge with this is that obviously sexual intercourse is between a male and a female and it is quite exclusionary of other sexual identities,” Baker noted at the time.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
She has also pushed for questions that could reveal to the state whether parents were spending adequate time talking about sexual matters with their children, information that could be used to justify explicit sex education programming across the state.
As the lead coordinator for the youth advisory team, Baker is clearly prioritizing the recruitment of LGBTQ teens to help influence public policy.
Since 2009, the youth advisory team has offered suggestions to the Alaska Adolescent Health Program and other community partners on publicly funded state campaigns and projects to influence and educate youth. It also helps design and implement various interventions targeting Alaska adolescents.
TAKING ACTION
— Click here to contact Alaska Health Commissioner Heidi Hedberg.
— Click here to call Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Click here to share information with the governor.
— Click here to learn more about the Youth Alliance for a Healthier Alaska (YAHA) program.
18 Comments
Why does this woman think it is her business to discuss sex with other people’s children? Has anyone asked her that directly? Groomers.
Why are we paying mentally ill people to do anything except seeking psychiatric help?
It’s not a mental illness it’s a medical difference. Educate yourself
It’s a mental illness and we need to encourage them to seek help instead of encouraging it, encouraging it just leads to anxiety, depression, self harm, and isolation in most cases.
Sounds like the entire department needs to fired and replaced with employees who have common sense and know there are two genders, not 32+.
Sweet! I need some extra cash. I’ll identify as a disoriented teenager for the day and offer my insights for $16 an hour. If I dye my hair blue, tear holes in my jeans and pierce my septum, how could they turn me down?
Great, hire kids with physiological disorders to help lead the rest of their generation. And what does Baker expect (hope) the results will be? Probably more physiological confused kids.
Brilliant! Looks like our State and Federal Governments are actually more screwed up than our LGBTQRSTUV kids. Not much hope as long as we SANE ADULTS allow children and idiots to rule over us!
The larger question is why any public official is paying children to talk about sex.
Right on the money, Tamra!
Thank Crime Boss Dunleavy and remember his first choice for Health and Social Service Commissioner, Adam Crumb. The lying, mealy mouthed Adam Crumb lied about his knowledge of contracts which came out when he hired the prison consultants to hire doctors and staff for API for one patient. Remember? Law suit cost the state big bucks. Then comes managing and dividing HHS into two divisions. He then went to the Senate finance committee twice because he kept lying about budget money and they kept saying NO. Crime Boss Dunleavy was exasperated and did an executive order to divide the department. Look at that mess we have today. Then the Crime Boss Dunleavy appointed Lying Mealy Mouthed Adam Crum to the Dept of Revenue. That is when Crime Boss found the Mealy mouthed liar couldn’t manage money or had any knowledge of accounting to understand what it takes to manage a state department. Crime Boss had to hire out of state accountant to ensure Lying Mealy Mouthed Adam Crum could present a budget to the legislative groups. After that, the Crime Boss Dunleavy put Lying Adam on the PFD Board. Well, he proved what the whole state already knew. Lying Mealy mouthed Adam Crum totaled all the investments and decided to take the whole list of investment accounts and tried to create the world’s biggest PFD to invest on the New York Stock market. Whew!! That lame duck, Lying Mealy=mouthed Adam Crum has really got out of control talents, Crime Boss with many other state personnel had to rein that idiot in. Then we hear about Crime Boss having to hire another consulting firm to investigate where many millions went during Lying Mealy-mouthed Adam Crum’s tenure with the PFD Board.
Why is it that no one sees the convoluted purpose of the Health and Social Services problems and what that means for the problems pushed out to the public, families, children in and out of school, and the disturbed thinking and choices pushed at them. Where does it start and who will bring sanity to some very bad management of that department that has not ended yet.
Hey wait a minute, are you the same Diana that comments all the time on Dermot’s website?
Freedom has gone too far that it has excelerated the openness of such atrocities to the point of not consulting the Parents of their children to be involved of such acts.
That’s license, not freedom or liberty.
Oh look here! The principled governor Dunleavy is presenting his perverse agenda again, right on the heels of the principled prayer breakfast honoring the gods of the past,Baal and Ashterof etc.. sp.!
If the church in this state doesn’t stop playing the sincere not our responsibility game, we deserve the outcome we are encountering!!!
Mike Dunleavy is, and has been a fraud in sheep’s clothing and is all in on destroying your children with your money!!!
How stupid are you!!!? Please respond in a way to prove my assessment wrong! Your silence proves me right!!!
Persons under 18 years old are children. Their brains have not yet completely formed. They are learning. They should be taught right from wrong, God’s laws. They are not yet wise enough to dictate public policy.
Obviously no one in the Alaska government can be trusted. Get rid of these morons and hire people with some common sense who know there are only two genders. Expand the mental institution and put some of these people (kids and all) in there for treatment instead of toadying to their fantasies and derangement.
Well done Diana