16. Healthy People 2020 and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health

• In Event: 408 - Visual Media Poster Presentation

Abstract

For more than three decades, the Healthy People initiative has provided a comprehensive set of national 10-year health promotion and disease prevention objectives aimed at improving the health of all Americans. The latest iteration, Healthy People 2020 (HP2020), introduced Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health as one of 42 topic areas for which national health objectives, including health disparities, are monitored and reported. OASH/ODPHP, the HHS agency that oversees HP2020, employs a multi-faceted approach to develop data-driven objectives that reflect important public health concerns and sets targets for these objectives for the nation to work toward. Through the development of webpages, evidence-based resources, and webinars focused on specific topics, in tandem with offering multiple opportunities for stakeholder and community involvement, HP2020 provides a platform that not only tracks the nation’s health, but also focuses on health disparities and national progress towards their elimination. Because relatively few nationally representative surveys track health indicators specifically for LGBT populations, creating national measures for the LGBT Health topic area has proved challenging. As a result, the focus for HP2020 is tracking the progress of inclusion of questions on LGBT status in nationally representative surveys. This presentation will focus on the initial development of objectives for the LGBT Health topic area and progress toward inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity questions in data sources and surveys being used to track Healthy People 2020 objectives.

Author

• Christina Natasha Dragon, National Center for Health Statistics/ CDC