April 14,2006 Volume 27, Number 8 Serving the Carolinas For Over 25 Years! LGBT Health Outlook Upbeat LGBT Health Reps Optimistic at Spring Meeting ByBobRothr V - Contributing Writer ’ Members of the National Coalition for LGBT Health were . upbeat as they met in Washington, DC on March 19.The just conclud ed LGBT Health Awareness Week had generated a record number of hits on their website, while grow ing numbers of. programs and increased funding offer better ways to serve the community. "One of the biggest accomplish ments is that we have maintained a powerful and legitimate pres ence in government given the hos tility and antipathy" toward the gay community front many mem* . bers of the Bush administratiarv said Barbara Warren, director of planning and research at the LGBT Community Center in New York City. Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), said they are working with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and others to develop a Healthcare Quality Index that will rate hospitals on their policies toward GLBT patients and employees. It is based upon the survey developed by HRC for their workplace project and will be compatible with die standards of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JACO). "It opens die door to issues of cultural competency" in serving , LGBT patients, said Kathleen i DeBold, executive director of The Mautner Project for lesbians with cancer. She said the business' model is most appropriate for large institutions like hospitals. The rating system could later be adapted and rolled out to other set tings like community clinics. Health issues are an increasingly Joel Ginsberg Andrea Dean Wigder and Joel Ginsberg at the meeting on the National Coalition for L.GBT Health important component of the public debate over LGBT political rights.;. Hospital visitation and healthcare are winning elements in die dis cussion over gay marriage and domestic partnerships. HRC lobbyist Dena Wigder said increased funding for abstinence only programs of sex education and HIV prevention "is really, real ly alarming." She said the newest restrictions not only require teach ing that sexual activity should be only within .marriage, but it must be defined as a union between a man and a woman. "It's not about health, it's about ideology. It's try ing to make the LGBT community invisible." One way mainstream health advocates are trying to strike back is with a provision in an appropri ations bill requiring that "all feder al funding for sexuality education programs must be medically accu rate," Wigder said. About 120 con gressmen have signed on as cosponsors. The religious right has tried to strip out the "peer-review" language, because much of the "data" behind their positions would not survive the peer-review process of medical journals. Ginsberg said Den£oaaticmcat bers of Congress are proposing a . federal health disparities bill. "It dcis not address LGBT popula tions, it addresses all of the other populations that have demonstrat ed health disparities—immigrants, rural populations, women, and racial and ethnic minorities." GLMA spoke with Rep Donna M. Christensen (D-Virgin Islands), a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus on health issues. She added LGBT-indusive language in the House version of the bill, but it got dropped in conference with the Senate. "We don't know exactly why that happened." Ginsberg called it "an opportunity for our community to lobby around that bill. It's an interesting educational tool." The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is creating an inventory and profile of the services, capaci ty, and funding of as many LGBT social services and healthcare orga nizations as possible, said policy director Eldie Acheson. They also are working with 7-10 agencies a year "to seek earmarks" to federal appropriations legisla tion, seeking to direct funds to individual LGBT service provider continued on page 11 By Bob Roehr Contributing Writer "There is little formal education about sexu al minority groups included in medical train-, ing. As a result otherwise knowledgeable providers are often uninformed about basic issues essential to providing high quality care" to LGBT patients. That is not news to many in the community, but the fact that it is being said in foe presti gious New England Journal of Medicine car ries more weight. The article "Improving . Health Care for the Lesbian and Gay Community" appears in the March 2 edition. It was written by Harvey J. Makadon, upm lessor at Harvard Medical School who also is affiliated with the gay oriented Fenway Community Health. 4* In the article, he reoouniS how toe decision to come out to his own physician at die we of forty nearly two decades ago, was "a huge issue, and for many people it remains so today. In places like Boston and San Francisco we tend not to think about that" he said in this exclusive interview. Makadon believes that for many physicians, it is primarily a lack of education on aspects of how: the LGBT patient may differ fro hetero sexual counterparts that leads to less than opti mal care. He points out a number of those dif ferences in the article. Sexually active gay men have a much high er need to be vaccinated for hepatitis B because that activity can put them at greater risk of exposure to me virus. Hepatitis B infec | tion can lead to serious liver damage, ffc ' - Many physicians assume that lesbians are at low or no risk for cenncal cancer and so skimp on pap smears that screen forearly lesions that . may develop into cancer In fad, many les bians have had sex with men early in their lives, and infection with the sexually transmit ted human papillomavirus (HFV), which can . cause cervical cancel is quite common. h can take decades fof dysplasia and cancer to ff develop from that exposure^ so screening is essential 4 , .... • ■ ■: ; www.scpride. org

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