LGBTQ HealthLink

Director, The Fenway Institute’s Network for LGBT Health Equity
My first meeting yesterday was with the Midlands Sexual Health Research Collaborative, what an active group of folk! Loved hearing about their educational campaigns and was pretty impressed by the 700+ person survey Dr. Fisher and the others conducted a few years ago for a report on the health of LGBT Nebraskans. This survey was able to generate national coverage on the high suicide rates for local LGBT people, even some interesting information on how the suicide ideation persists into adulthood. Ugh. And not surprisingly, the other big news from it was the high smoking rates, 26% v. 20% for the rest of the state population. I also loved hearing about how they had such a large trans sample, no doubt in part because one of the researchers is openly trans, great job Dr. Irwin! I really look forward to his coming paper on the trans sample, we too rarely get information on trans people out of the biggest cities. Oh, and watch for another paper coming on tobacco use as well. I hope some of the ideas I offered on where to pursue research funding can help Drs. Fisher, Coleman, Irwin, and Jawed-Wessel and all their impressive graduate assistants keep the LGBT health research data rolling in!