Societal Impacts and Solutions of Health Testing for LGBTQIA+ Individuals
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In this program:
How can health testing for LGBTQIA+ patients be impacted by societal attitudes and discrimination? Dana Powell Baker discusses past provider attitudes about LGBTQIA+patients and solutions to improve access to care.
Transcript
Dana Powell Baker:
When it comes to societal attitudes, discrimination, and stigma that has impacted health testing for our patient population that would, I would say, fall within that umbrella or identity of LGBTQIA+ individuals, unfortunately, it's a very long-standing issue, barrier that we have had in healthcare. I would say even dating back to late '70s, early '80s, upon the discovery of AIDS and HIV, where it was stigmatized with a particular segment of the population where they were consistently correlating that diagnosis with the type of patient or the identity of a patient based on their...whether it was their orientation or their identity. And again, because of that stigma that was prevalent during that time, unfortunately, it has continued in different instances, whether it's been through requirements or eligibility for blood donation. Or even looking at what we recently had with the monkeypox outbreak. So in seeing this reappear in society how what we expect that to resonate with individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community, it's not always positive. It's not always in the best light or in the best sense that would encourage these patients to seek out the critical tests that they need.
And so, again, we need to really strive to being more inclusive, rooting what we're sharing and saying in science and not based on stigma or discrimination or bias. Because, again, that is causing patients to not come in and get the treatment and the testing that they need, and that's definitely not the path that we want to go as a healthcare community. So again, this is an opportunity to really provide that education, to provide that transparency and saying that as we talk about increasing equity, as we talk about mitigating or decreasing in equity, that this is an important area that we need to look at from all healthcare disciplines and to see how we can collaborate and contribute to improving care, access to care without these barriers, especially related to discrimination and bias.
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