Pride Month
Jasmeen Grewal 6/19/25
Discrimination that the LGBTQ+ community faces in the healthcare system.
Discrimination
- LGBTQ+ individuals report being refused access to a lot of healthcare, mental, and emotional services
- Dealing with disrespectful and unequal treatment
- Experiencing verbal harassment from healthcare providers
- The Trump-Pence administration is seeking to make it easier for health care providers to discriminate against LGBTQ people and women
- Discrimination in health care settings endangers LGBTQ people’s lives through delays or denials of medically necessary care
- Discrimination affects LGBTQ parents as well., Many parents may be turned down for certain jobs, doctors, and health clinic check-ups for their children
- LGBTQ+ people experience discrimination in health care settings; that discrimination discourages them from seeking care
- Discrimination and stigma contribute to higher rates of mental health conditions, substance abuse
Bias
- Providers hold biases that affect their interactions with LGBTQ+ patients
- This leads to inadequate or inappropriate care for these patients
- Themes related to the patients’ response and consequences from a biased interaction support prior work about medical mistrust originating from perceived discrimination experiences
- These themes and their interconnection allowed us to understand how BIPOC and LGBTQ+ patients experience biases in healthcare, our RQ1
- Health informatics researchers and practitioners can leverage our findings to inform the development of technological innovations that improve the quality of patient-provider interaction by addressing implicit bias
- Fear of discrimination can lead LGBTQ+ individuals to delay or avoid seeking necessary medical care
Lack of Provider Care
- Some healthcare providers lack the necessary knowledge and training to address the specific health needs of LGBTQ+ individuals
- A lack of clinical research on LGBTQ+ health-related issues
- Restrictive health benefits
- Limited role models
- Fear due to stigma, discrimination, and institutional bias in the health care system
- They’re at higher risk of certain conditions, have less access to health care, and have worse health outcomes
- These disparities are seen in the areas of behavioral health, physical health, and access to care
- Finding a healthcare provider knowledgeable about LGBTQ+ health or with a welcoming environment can be challenging.
- Some healthcare systems and providers lack cultural competency regarding LGBTQ+ health issues
Issues
- LGBTQ people have lower rates of insurance; they are more likely to delay medical care, and they report high levels of discrimination by healthcare providers
- Transgender people may struggle to find competent care providers, and blanket denials of coverage by insurance companies, despite federal laws and laws in many states prohibiting such discrimination
- Recent efforts to permit healthcare providers to refuse to provide care to LGBTQ patients threaten their ability to access the care they need
- These experiences have a cumulative effect: research finds that LGBTQ people have lower overall health as a result of these barriers
- As a result, they may avoid seeking preventive care or treatment until it is necessary, which leads to poorer health outcomes.
- LGBTQ-specific barriers included concerns around being outed (22%), not having their LGBTQ identity understood (20%) or overly focusing on their LGBTQ identity (16%), and not finding a provider who was LGBTQ (11%)
Citations/Credits