Understanding the Status and Well-Being of Sexual and Gender Diverse Populations

Consensus

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The increase in prevalence and visibility of sexually gender diverse (SGD) populations illuminates the need for greater understanding of the ways in which current laws, systems, and programs affect their well-being. Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, or intersex, as well as those who express same-sex or -gender attractions or behaviors, will have experiences across their life course that differ from those of cisgender and heterosexual individuals. Characteristics such as age, race and ethnicity, and geographic location intersect to play a distinct role in the challenges and opportunities SGD people face.

Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations reviews the available evidence and identifies future research needs related to the well-being of SDG populations across the life course. This report focuses on eight domains of well-being; the effects of various laws and the legal system on SGD populations; the effects of various public policies and structural stigma; community and civic engagement; families and social relationships; education, including school climate and level of attainment; economic experiences (e.g., employment, compensation, and housing); physical and mental health; and health care access and gender-affirming interventions.

The recommendations of Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations aim to identify opportunities to advance understanding of how individuals experience sexuality and gender and how sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status affect SGD people over the life course.

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436 pages · 6 x 9 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-68081-6
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-68082-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/25877

Suggested citation

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Charlotte J. Patterson

CHARLOTTE J. PATTERSON is professor of psychology in the Psychology Department at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the role of sexual orientation in human development and family lives, particularly the study of child development in lesbian- and gay-parented families. She is a coeditor of the Handbook of Psychology and Sexual Orientation (Oxford University Press, 2013). She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS). She is the recipient of APA’s Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy Award, Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from APA’s Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, Outstanding Achievement Award from APA’s Committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns, and the Carolyn Attneave Diversity Award from APA’s Society for Couple and Family Psychology. Patterson’s Ph.D. degree in psychology is from Stanford University.

Martin-José J. Sepulveda

MARTÍN-JOSÉ SEPÚLVEDA (NAM) is an IBM fellow and serves as a senior executive advisor to IBM and to five health technology start-up companies. He is also CEO of CLARALUZ LLC, a health, data, technology, and analytics consulting firm. He previously served as IBM vice president of integrated health services, and led health policy and strategy, health benefits innovation and purchasing, occupational health, and well-being services for IBM globally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Florida Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine, and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Technology. He serves on the Council on Health Research for Development, the University of Iowa College of Public Health Board of Advisors, and the University of Pennsylvania Board of Overseers. He has an M.P.H and an M.D. from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Science from the University of Iowa.

M.V. Lee Badgett

M. V. LEE BADGETT is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and serves on the faculty of the School of Public Policy. She is also a Williams distinguished scholar at the Williams Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles. Her current research focuses on poverty in the LGBT community, employment discrimination against LGBT people in the United States, and the cost of homophobia and transphobia in global economies. She has published many journal articles and reports on economic and policy issues for LGBT people, including her most recent book, The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All. Her other books analyze the positive U.S. and European experiences with marriage equality for gay couples and debunks economic myths about LGBT people. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Marlon M. Bailey

MARLON M. BAILEY is associate professor of women and gender studies, African and African American studies, and faculty coordinator of the LGBT Studies Certificate Program in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Bailey is a former visiting professor with the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. His book, Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit was awarded the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Quarterly; Gay and Lesbian Quarterly; Signs, Feminist Studies, Souls, Gender, Place, and Culture; The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services; AIDS Patient Care & STDs; LGBT Health; and in several book collections. He is also the recipient of the Joan Heller Bernard fellowship from the CLAGS Center for LGBT Studies in New York City. He has a Ph.D. in African American studies with a designated emphasis in women, gender, and sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley.

Katharine B. Dalke

KATHARINE B. DALKE is a psychiatrist at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in Harrisburg, with a clinical focus on the psychiatric care and support of LGBTQ and intersex adolescents and adults. Dr. Dalke is also an assistant professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and Humanities, and the Director of the Office for Culturally Responsive Health Care Education at Penn State College of Medicine. Her academic efforts center on LGBTQ and intersex mental health, medical education, and cultural competency within an intersectional framework. She is a longtime advocate for people with intersex conditions/differences of sex development, and she has been recognized with an appointment to the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs. She has an M.D and an M.A. in Bioethics from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She trained in psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, with additional clinical training in transgender health at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Andrew R. Flores

ANDREW R. FLORES is assistant professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University and affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on attitude formation and change about marginalized groups, particularly LGBT and the implementation of LGBTQ-related policies as a result of such attitudes. He also studies the political behavior of LGBT people with a central focus on the role of linked-fate in LGBTQ politics. His work has also examined the demography of LGBT people, and he has published estimates of the number of adults who identify as transgender in the United States. He has also documented the experiences of LGBT people when interacting with state institutions and the effect of LGBTQ-related public policies and elections on LGBTQ people and the general public. His research has been published widely, including in Science Advances; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; American Journal of Public Health; Public Opinion Quarterly; and Political Psychology. He has a Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of California, Riverside.

Gary J. Gates

GARY J. GATES was the Blachford-Cooper distinguished scholar and research director at the Williams Institute at School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also previously served as senior researcher at Gallup and as research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. He has published extensively on the demographic and economic characteristics of the LGBT population, and he coauthored The Gay and Lesbian Atlas. As a recognized expert on the geography and demography of the LGBT population, he provided expert witness testimony in one of the four cases challenging state bans on marriage for same-gender couples heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the case that led to the decision that same-gender couples have a constitutional right to marriage. He has a Ph.D. in public policy and management from the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.

Angelique Harris

ANGELIQUE C. HARRIS is the director of faculty development at Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) and director of faculty development and diversity in the Department of Medicine (DoM) at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Harris works to design, implement, and lead innovative programs and initiatives aimed at providing and promoting more equitable learning and working environments for faculty, staff, and students. An applied medical sociologist, Dr. Harris’ research examines health, wellness, and resilience within marginalized communities and her areas of research expertise are in race and ethnicity, gender and sexualities, health and illness, social movements, cultural studies, and urban studies. More specifically, her research studies how groups construct health issues and how the marginalization and stigmatization they experience impact their access to resources. Dr. Harris has authored and co-authored dozens of books, articles, and essays, including the books Queer People of Color: Connected but Not Comfortable (Lynne Rienner, 2018) and the Intersections of Race and Sexuality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) book series. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

Mark L. Hatzenbuehler

MARK L. HATZENBUEHLER is the John L. Loeb associate professor of the social sciences in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His research examines the role of stigma in shaping population health inequalities, with a particular focus on the mental health consequences of structural and systemic forms of stigma. He has published widely, including in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Psychological Bulletin; American Psychologist; American Journal of Public Health; JAMA Pediatrics; and JAMA Psychiatry. He is a recipient of the Louise Kidder Early Career Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association (APA), the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformational Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from APA’s Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. He is an elected fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the premier honorary organization for scientists working at the interface of behavior and medicine. He has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale University.

Nan Hunter

NAN D. HUNTER is the Scott K. Ginsburg professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Her scholarship spans multiple fields, including sexuality and gender law; social movements and law; feminist legal theory; and health law. She is coauthor of Sexuality, Gender, and the Law (4th ed.), the first law school textbook to conceptualize sexuality and gender as a mutually dynamic relationship for purposes of state regulation. Her current project is a book on civil rights movements, law, and culture. Prior to teaching, she specialized in constitutional and civil rights law for the American Civil Liberties Union, where she founded the LGBT Rights Project. She also previously served as deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as associate dean at Georgetown University Law Center. She is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. Her awards include the Pioneer of Courage award from the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the inaugural Dan Bradley award from the LGBT Bar Association, and the Edie Windsor Lifetime Achievement Award from Equality Florida. She has a B.A. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Georgetown University.

Tonia Poteat

TONIA C. POTEAT is assistant professor in the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a core faculty member in the university’s Center for Health Equity Research. She is also is a certified physician assistant who provides care for people living with HIV at the university’s Infectious Disease Clinic. Her research, teaching, and clinical practice focus on LGBTQ health and HIV with particular attention to the role of stigma in driving health disparities. She has published widely on the health of transgender adults and serves as associate editor for the journal LGBT Health. She recently served on the Sexual and Gender Minority Working Group for the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office of the National Institutes of Health. She has a Ph.D. in international health/social and behavioral interventions from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sari L. Reisner

SARI L. REISNER is assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, based in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is also assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of transgender health research at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health. His research addresses health disparities in sexual and gender minority populations, with specialization in transgender health and in adolescent and young adult health. Dr. Reisner is an investigator of multiple LGBTQ health studies funded domestically and internationally, including a project to enroll and follow physical and mental health outcomes in a cohort of 4,500 transgender and gender diverse patients in Boston and New York City. He has coauthored many articles in LGBTQ health and was profiled in The Lancet as a global leader in transgender health. He has a Sc.D. in social and psychiatric epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Stephen T. Russell

STEPHEN T. RUSSELL is the Priscilla Pond Flawn regents professor in child development in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences and a faculty member in the Population Research Center, both at the University of Texas-Austin. He studies adolescent development, with an emphasis on adolescent sexuality, LGBT youth, and parent-adolescent relationships. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, he published a series of papers that were the first to document significant health risks among sexual-minority adolescents. He also studies health risk and resilience among this population, with an emphasis on gender and cultural differences, and he serves as an expert in the role of school policies, programs, and practices in supporting adolescent adjustment, achievement, and health. His community work has included serving as human relations commissioner in Durham, North Carolina; Davis, California; and Tucson, Arizona. He has served as president of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and on the governing boards of the Society for Research in Child Development, the National Council on Family Relations, and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University.

Debra Umberson

DEBRA J. UMBERSON is Centennial professor of liberal arts and director of the Center on Aging and Population Sciences at the University of Texas-Austin. Her research focuses on social determinants of health across the life course, with attention to social ties, health disparities, and the use of blended research methods. Much of her recent work considers how spouses influence each other’s health-related behavior, mental health, and health care, and how these processes vary across gay, lesbian, and heterosexual unions. Her work also documents racial and ethnic differences in exposure to the death of family members over the life course and implications for health. She is an elected fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. Her awards from the American Sociological Association include the 2015 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award for research on aging, the 2016 Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award for career contributions to medical sociology, and the 2020 Distinguished Career Award for research on families. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University.

Webinar

LGBTQI+ Communities in the COVID-19 Pandemic

June 22, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM (ET)

Past

Materials

About

The National Academies report Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations(2020) underscored how health disparities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other sexual and gender diverse (LGBTQI+) communities are exacerbated by social forces such as poverty and lack of adequate health insurance coverage or access to care. These issues make responses to COVID-19, including vaccinations, a critical public health priority for sexual and gender diverse populations. At the same time, LGBTQI+ communities have a long history of organizing to support one another to combat health crises like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which highlights the resilience of these communities and the power of organizing in the face of public health crises.

This webinar will share insight on what is known about COVID-19 experiences in LGBTQI+ populations, and will discuss the importance of community formation and mobilization for LGBTQI+ populations as outlined in the 2020 report. It will highlight findings from surveys by the Tegan and Sara Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation on COVID-19 experiences and vaccination attitudes among LGBTQI+ people.

Speakers include:

Tegan and Sara Quin, Tegan and Sara Foundation
Kellan Baker, Johns Hopkins University (committee consultant)
Lindsey Dawson,Kaiser Family Foundation
Jessica Halem, LGBTQ health consultant
Megan Hall, Entrée Health
Marlon M. Bailey, Arizona State University (committee member)

Additional Information

Contact

Mary Ghitelman

mghitelman@nas.edu

Disclaimer

It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

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Understanding the Status and Well-Being of Sexual and Gender Diverse Populations

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Understanding the Status and Well-Being of Sexual and Gender Diverse Populations

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Featured publication

Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations

Description

Collaborators

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Contact us

Provide feedback

Request materials

More like this

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

Modernizing Mathematics Education for Grades 9-14

Health Care Financing to Improve Availability of Affordable Contraception: Identifying Promising Practices

Transit Cooperative Research Program

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

Modernizing Mathematics Education for Grades 9-14

Aging in Place with Dementia: A Workshop

Developing an Agenda for Population Aging and Social Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): A Workshop

Structural Racism and Rigorous Models of Social Inequity: A Workshop