Lesbian Health Current Assessment and Directions for the Future (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Conclusions and Recommendations
5 Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 155-164
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From page 155... ...
Conclusion 2: There are significant barriers to conducting research on lesbian health, including lack offending, which have limited the development of more sophisticated studies, data analyses, and the publication of results.
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From page 156... ...
Risk factors that influence the health of lesbians across the life span include negative attitudes and stigma toward them, barriers in access to health care, socioeconomic factors, various legal factors including the fact that engaging in lesbian sexual behavior is illegal in some states, and the stresses associated with all of these factors. However, little is known about the specific impact of these risk factors on lesbian health and even less about any unique protective factors and how they may operate.
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From page 157... ...
These include structural barriers, such as the potential impact of managed care and the lack of legal recognition of relationship partners; financial barriers, which have an impact on access to health insurance coverage; and personal and cultural barriers, including attitudes of health care providers and the lack of cultural competency among providers for 157
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From page 158... ...
In addition to the general conclusions and research priorities, the committee makes eight recommendations for improving the knowledge base on lesbian health. RECOMMENDS {IONS Recommendation 1: Public and private funding to support research on lesbian health needs to be increased in order to enhance knowledge about risks to health and protective factors, to improve methodologies for gathering information about lesbian health, to increase understanding of the diversity of the lesbian population, and to improve lesbians' access to mental and physical health care services.
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From page 159... ...
This will allow investigators to minimize underreporting of lesbian status and also minimize biased estimates of the proportion of lesbians in different social groups. Recommendation 3: Researchers should routinely consider including questions about sexual orientation on data collection forms in relevant studies in the behavioral and biomedical sciences to capture the full range of female experience and to increase knowledge about associations between sexual orientation and health status.
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From page 160... ...
Pilot studies are recommended to test the feasibility of including these questions, with careful attention given to protecting confidentiality and assessing response bias and its impact on disclosure. The committee recommends that researchers submitting proposals for federally funded research, whether unsolicited ROls, responses to Pro gram Announcements, or responses to Requests for Proposals, routinely evaluate whether they should include sexual orientation questions in their protocols, just as they would other sociodemographic variables.
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From page 161... ...
Because there are wide social and cultural differences in the health-related stressors, risks, and protective factors to which lesbians are exposed in different social and cultural milieus, the committee recommends that studies of lesbian health be funded that include the full range of variation in race and ethnicity, social class, age, and socioeconomic status. Particularly given the lack of knowledge about lesbian health issues, the committee believes that it is imperative that researchers strive to involve members of the lesbian population being studied in the development and conduct of research on lesbian health.
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From page 162... ...
Given that the field of lesbian health research is still in its infancy and many researchers and members of institutional review boards are not aware of the ethical issues that should be considered in the conduct of research on lesbian health, the committee further urges that the NIH, in collaboration with the CDC, sponsor a conference on the ethical issues involved in conducting research on lesbian health, including issues related to privacy and confidentiality, future use of data, recruitment of subjects, and informed consent. This conference would be designed to inform members of institutional review boards, researchers, and members of federal review panels and should involve representatives from the lesbian community.
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From page 163... ...
Recommendation 7: Federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, foundations, health professional associations, and academic institutions, should develop and support mechanisms for broadly disseminating information about lesbian health to health care providers, researchers, and the public. The committee recommends that mechanisms be developed to disseminate knowledge and state-of-the-art methodological strategies for designing and implementing lesbian health studies to researchers and students in academic and nonacademic research institutions and community settings.
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From page 164... ...
A variety of strategies might be used to increase training opportunities for lesbian health researchers for example, including lesbian health in the scope of pro- and postdoctoral programs in all health professions. NIH institutes could consider targeting training grants on lesbian health or including lesbian research in the scope of existing training grants.
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