The Institute of Medicine released a report, The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People today. This report was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) so that a research agenda can be formulated to ensure that the health needs of LGBT people can be met. This is a very important development for the LGBT community because in order for health needs to be addressed, there needs to be more formal study.
This development is comparable to the movement in this country over the last few decades to ensure that women and ethnic minorities health needs were addressed separately. For years, the "standard" patient in medical research was the 60 kilogram white male. All drug development, disease progression, epidemiology, etc. used this standard patient rather than considering the unique needs of different populations. This report is an important move towards considering the unique health needs of LGBT individuals.
Highlights from the report summary are: 1) Attention needs to be focused on the chronic stress that may accompany stigmatization 2) Health status needs to be examined through the lifetime, including unique issues of adolescence (including the potential for increased rates of depression, suicide, and substance abuse), adulthood (the potential increased rates of obesity and breast cancer among lesbians), and the elder years and 3) that study needs to be made of health issues LGBT sub-populations, especially the disparately high rate of HIV among gay, bisexual, and transgender minority men.
Staff at the Dorothy Mann Center are reviewing this report in full as we continue to plan our agenda for exploring issues of the youth we serve.
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