A committee report pushed to take on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations in health studies. This is the gist of the report prepared by a committee at the Institute of Medicine. The details said that information on these populations should be collected beforehand. This means that these data should be readily accessible in the event that these people would need health services. This would help the health professionals and related personnel to serve them better. The most essential is that they were known so that it would be easier to understand specific health conditions that affect them.
There is very little complete data on LGBT population health status and needs as of the present. Although they are provided with medical services, the problem lies in the way they are being acknowledged. Still, these groups are not seen as different from one another. Due to the scarcity of comprehensive data, the report recommended the need for health researches that focus on how to bridge this gap. Specifically, these should give emphasis to the different stages of life among the LGBT populations. These should delineate the research strategy and data collection procedure should be put in place. The main purpose is to get a fuller grasp of these groups of population.
There should be a change of course in research from being too broad to more particular. Race and ethnic minorities used to be the concentration of health researches. It is just timely to input research efforts not only on usual collection of information. There should be more importance on the understanding of diverse health conditions that are widespread among various groups, or those that affect them in an unusual way.
When comes to health needs and services, personal privacy is not an issue. However, the shame placed by society on gender and sexual minorities can make them cautious to reveal their sexual orientation. While a few would openly demonstrate what they really are, others would think many times whether to do the same. Being a minority population is another problem that researches along this field would encounter. Extra hard work has to be done in order to come up with adequate number of individuals who would comprise the sample population.
Government should push through despite these perceived problems. These should not stop its efforts to collect demographic data on LGBT individuals. It should be supportive on finding ways to provide standardized measures of sexual orientation, at the same time gender individuality. The National Institutes of Health should provide trainings on how to conduct research with LGBT populations. In the end, the team recommends that these data should be produced by electronic means with due concern on individual privacy.
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