Project Summary
Reducing healthcare disparities among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer patients is a public health priority. Frequently grouped as “LGBTQ,” gender/sexual minority individuals share experiences of stigma and discrimination, yet they have distinctive healthcare needs, ranging from treatments for alcohol/tobacco use to depression/suicidality, intimate partner violence to asthma, and obesity to sexually transmitted diseases. Addressing this constellation of needs requires interventions at both healthcare patient and healthcare provider levels, and is reliant on receipt of meaningful input from each of these stakeholder groups. Our Tier I efforts, made possible through funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, resulted in the formation of the New Mexico LGBTQ Health Collaborative, an advisory group of LGBTQ healthcare patients and health advocates dedicated to improving the health and healthcare of LGBTQ New Mexicans. The collaborative worked to identify initial patient-driven topics to reduce the health disparities experienced by members of this vulnerable population. Funds awarded through Tier II will allow us to strengthen these initial partnerships and will facilitate expansion of the collaborative to include the healthcare providers and research partners necessary for addressing the identified health and healthcare deficits experienced by LGBTQ patients. By bringing patient/advocate research partners into dialogue with healthcare providers and researchers, we will work to develop patient-centered comparative effectiveness research questions designed to increase cultural competency and guide patient and practice-based intervention research that is relevant and sustainable, thereby reducing gaps in New Mexico’s healthcare system.