Sexual Orientation Health Disparities

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The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender individuals acronymic by LGBT embrace all races and ethnicities, religions, and social classes around the world. We know that this community faces many health care disparities like the lack of access to needed services related to their sexual orientation or gender identity; however there is a gap in health data for the number of LGBT individual and their health needs. This is because sexual orientation and gender identity are not frequently asked on state or national surveys and majorly that many people don’t openly express their true sexual orientation. Health disparities refers to the inequities in access and quality to health care that are experienced by minority groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, lower income individuals and families, sexual minorities, and immigrant communities. LGBT individuals that are considered “in the closet,” lose the critical potential for empowerment and capability to participate in the services that may improve their access to appropriate health care. Approximately 20 States has agreements against same-sex activity and around the world we see a widespread discrimination directed at people who have revealed their identity. Now many LGBT individuals feel that “coming out” is dangerous, even coming out to health care providers, they feel that they would be personally judged and not receive good healthcare. LGBT people face daily discrimination, and this oppression contributes to the health disparities. LGBT community’s health requires specific attention from health care because LGBT individuals are at a higher risk than their heterosexual peers for many diseases and other conditions. These poor outcomes are a result of differences in access to hea...

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...knowledge about their specific health needs. They also can implement medical education classes for LGBT issues in healthcare. However, all these ideas is just simply a start, with new data of the numbers of the minority group, we can measure how much the federal government can fund for the specialized education and or medical needs. Also educating the staff and medical students is important to help create any facility whether it is a hospital or small clinic to become a LGBT friendly environment. This helps decrease the need for specialized facilities for the LGBT community because of hospitals denying individual’s treatment because of their orientation will be diminished.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community’s health requires health professionals to understand, conceptualize and develop plans to help the needs of LGBT individuals and communities.

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