By Matt Simonette

Fund awards YPC grant for GSAs in South Side schools
Youth Pride Center last week announced that it has been awarded a grant by The Crossroads Fund Youth Fund to help organize 10 gay-straight alliances in Chicago Public Schools on the South Side. YPC is focusing on schools where most of its youth attend and seeks suggestions from youth through surveys on additional schools to target.

YPC is serving as the home base for the GSAs, where students are to be trained in organizing and leadership development. The group may partner with other organizations.

Once developed, the GSAs would move from YPC to their respective schools, with the help of CPS officials. YPC would support the GSAs for one calendar year.

Currently, YPC officials said, there are no gay-straight alliances in public schools on the South Side of Chicago. YPC serves youth from 22 schools.

Cano joins Howard Brown Health Center
Howard Brown Health Center announced Friday that Deborah Cano has joined the agency. Cano, a board-certified psychiatrist, specializes in addiction, and is seeing clients on Monday, Tuesday and Friday at the Sheridan Road facility.

Prior to joining Howard Brown, Dr. Cano was unit chief of the Substance Abuse Resource Program at Bellevue Hospital Center and a clinical instructor at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. She is licensed by the states of Illinois and New York, and in 2006 was honorably discharged from the United States Navy Reserve. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Kemper Scholarship for Underserved Minorities, the U.S. Navy Reserve’s Health Professionals Scholarship, the Navy Achievement Medal and the APA/SAMHSA Substance abuse Minority Fellowship.

Dr. Cano received her bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Houston, and her medical degree from the University of Texas in Galveston. She is a member of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

“We are honored to have Dr. Cano join our team of providers,” said Michael Cook, Howard Brown president and CEO. “Although she will be seeing many different clients, her experience with addictions will be invaluable to our community.”