Every person has a right to live a healthy life. One part of that vision is equal access to health care for all. But unsurprisingly, not everyone have the same ability to receive health care due to things like socioeconomic status, race, gender, or even sexual orientation. Indeed, LGBT people often have less access to health care than their non-LGBT counterparts, most often due to discrimination and stigma [1].

The Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced “the formal designation of sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) as a health disparity population for NIH research.” Read the full announcement here.

What does this mean? That the NIH is officially recognizing that LGBT people have less access to health care and that improved research on LGBT-specific (defined here broadly as sexual and gender minorities) health issues is essential to improved health care.

The long-overdue announcement was supported by an important report released by the non-partisan National Academies of Science (NAS) in 2011. The report identified gaps in the research on the health of LGBT persons and made recommendations for improving this research that could benefit not just LGBT people, but the health care system overall.

LGBT individuals have unique health challenges that many doctors do not understand or address. For example, certain types of cancer seem to be more prevalent among gay men compared to straight men, which means different cancer screenings would be important for gay men [2].

The new designation by NIMHD will hopefully increase research and knowledge about the health challenges of LGBT people and will hopefully result in improved health care for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Selected References

1. Hatzenbuehler ML, Bellatorre A, Lee Y, Finch BK, Muennig P, Fiscella K. Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations. Social science & medicine. 2014;103:33-41. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.06.005.
2. Quinn GP, Sanchez JA, Sutton SK, Vadaparampil ST, Nguyen GT, Green BL, et al. Cancer and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) populations. CA: a cancer journal for clinicians. 2015;65(5):384-400. doi: 10.3322/caac.21288.